


Avengers: Greatest Generation

by HoneySempai



Series: Greatest Generation [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - World War II, Anxiety Attacks, Dysphoria, Emotional Sex, Established Relationship - Stucky, F/F, F/M, Holocaust, Intersex Steve Rogers, Jewish Steve Rogers, Jotunn | Frost Giant, M/M, Native American Steve Rogers, Other, Peggy Carter Is a Good Bro, Peggy Carter is having none of your shit, Period-Typical Antisemitism, Period-Typical Racism, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Steve Rogers Is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-21 11:24:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 34,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4827314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneySempai/pseuds/HoneySempai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 1942.</p><p>Johann Schmidt has stolen the Tessarect, a power source so fearsome that its home country, mysterious Nordic nation called Asgard, has allowed both heirs to the throne to go into battle with the Nazis rather than unleash it on the world as a weapon. </p><p>The SSR's first iteration of Project Rebirth has ended in disaster. Tony Stark has turned his focus to designing and promoting weapons. His father Howard is assisting Dr. Abraham Erskine's second attempt at creating a Super Soldier, and Agent Peggy Carter has been tasked with finding test subjects. </p><p>Near Kreichsberg, Austria, Clint and Laura Barton are harboring a Soviet spy calling herself Natasha Romanov.</p><p>In Tuskegee, Alabama, Sam Wilson is training with the 99th Pursuit Squadron. </p><p>In New York, New York, as his sister Rebecca prays for news of her MIA boyfriend Bruce Banner, Bucky Barnes is preparing to ship out with the 107th Infantry, and Steve Rogers is desperately trying to join him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

The sky was too bright tonight.

Darkness had reigned somewhat supreme in Asgard since the war began in earnest for the country. The skies around the border towns had been filled with smoke for weeks, as the army fended off the encroaching German military. Thor had taken the sunlight when he charged headfirst into the fray, eschewing the traditional role of rallying point and figurehead in favor of actually leading a unit of his own. Loki had taken the moonlight soon thereafter, as he much more circumspectly joined his elder brother on the battlefield.

The weather itself seemed aware of the national feeling. Here in Edda, at least, it had rained for five days straight, filling the sky with gloomy gray clouds. Miserable enough by itself, but with winter approaching just as relentlessly as the Nazis, the water had frozen to the city streets in waves of black ice. The light that might have reflected off of it was dimmed by the populace, rationing their electricity as stringently as they did their food, metal, and rubber. It was wishful thinking and a good luck charm in a way, also; the less the houses were illuminated, the less noticeable they were to the air bombers.

So tonight, although there were only two beacons of bluish-white light, obviously coming from a car, bearing down on Edda Church, it was far too much for Heimdall to feel comfortable with.

He did not respond to the pounding on the door when it came soon after. He tried not to flinch when, after a few seconds of silence, the car started up again and rammed into the doors, splintering the four-hundred-years old panels as if they were nothing.

"Knock knock."

"Services are held at 8:30 and 11 on Sunday morning," Heimdall said evenly.

"Unfortunately," the man before him said, cracking a half-smile as if he were genuinely playing along, "I am on a tight schedule and will be unable to attend."

"Truly a shame," Heimdall deadpanned, keeping his eyes fixed steadily, unflappably, on the invader, even as the man's cronies streamed out of the armored car in his peripheral vision. "Sadly, I am in no fit state to entertain tonight."

"Entertainment will not be necessary," the man continued. "We will only take as long as we need."

"I doubt you will find anything of interest to you here."

"On the contrary, nothing could enchant me more." The man flicked his eyes around the sanctuary, surveying the scores of previous stones, of every color and cut imaginable, that decorated the walls. "This church used to be the royal treasury, was it not? Before your people moved the capitol to Valhalla," he said, meandering away from his spot with his hands shoved into the pockets of his coat.

"Your knowledge of our history is impressive," Heimdall said, increasing the speed of his breath as the man approached the altar and its elaborate multi-pronged candelabra, the body of which was encrusted with a diamond-shaped jewel of azure color.

"You will be more impressed by my knowledge of your mythology," the man said, reaching out with a black-gloved hand to pluck the candelabra off the altar. Heimdall jerked roughly, and like puppets being pulled on a string the group of soldiers moved at him at once.

"Herr Schmidt..." one of them said.

Schmidt made a hard hissing noise as he passed the candelabra between his hands, turning the ancient object of solid gold over and over as if it were a hollow plastic imitation of itself. He paused, considering, and then one one rough movement threw it to the floor. The gold withstood the force, but the air filled with the sound of glass shattering as the supposed gem met violently with the cobblestone.

"Clever," Schmidt said, nodding at Heimdall; Heimdall stared back at him with a carefully blank face. Schmidt cracked another half-smile, before turning his gaze back to the altar, or rather, the wall behind it, and the design carved into it. "That is a representation of Yggdrasil, is it not?"

"Your knowledge of our mythology is not that impressive after all. Every schoolchild in Asgard can draw Yggdrasil in their sleep."

"Be that as it may," Schmidt said, drifting around the altar, closer to the wall. "It's a rather curious thing for a Christian church to host such a pagan artifact."

"Many buildings are repurposed as the centuries pass," Heimdall said, folding his arms into the billowing sleeves of his robe. "Surely in Germany you see the same phenomenon?"

"Rarely. In truth, though, I would prefer to see Yggdrasil on display in our houses of worship." Schmidt came to a stop a few inches away from the wall and tilted his head back to look up, assessing the height and number of gems scattered across the branches of the tree, before glancing down, studying the roots.

"This," Schmidt continued, running his fingertips against a detail of a long, thin dragon, its teeth gnawing on a primary root as the claws of his forelegs tore at the lateral ones, "is Niddhog, is it not? The serpent that drinks the blood of the most damned. Considered by many to be a harbinger of Ragnarok." He smirked as he traced his fingers over the corpses scattered around the dragon. "I empathize."

Schmidt heard rather than saw the cocking of the gun Heimdall pulled from within his robe. Amid the panicked shout of his entourage pulling their own weapons, he turned slowly, his hands held up, his smile never leaving his face.

"Is this the point where you tell me to freeze?"

Schmidt's hands jerked forward. Heimdall pulled the trigger, and in the second he expected Schmidt to double over in agony, instead the bullet fell to the floor, completely frozen.

A cold sensation crept up Heimdall's legs as he stared at Schmidt's face in shock. He blinked, and with the movement he realized that the iciness now running up his spine and spreading across his abdomen was entirely literal. He tried to lurch forward, but his legs were rooted to the ground; he tried to shout, but the cold took his jaw and kept it wrenched open, crept inside, and seized his tongue.

"Tear down this wall," Schmidt barked, as the tips of Heimdall's ears began to freeze over. "You," he snapped, pointing at the soldier who had moved last to follow orders, "keep watch. If anyone approaches..." He glanced at the man's gun, and then at his own hands, considering for a moment. "...tell me."

He turned his gaze back to Heimdall, assessing the nearly completely frozen man with something like sadistic pity on his face.

"Let this," he gestured to the wall, to his soldiers, and to himself, "be a lesson to you, Reverend. When a people relinquishes the might of their divine past, they should not be surprised when someone equally as qualified comes along to take up the mantle."


	2. Chapter 2

He'd done this before. It felt like he'd done it a hundred times. He strategically placed his newspaper to cover his entire upper body, he avoided eye contact, he kept himself as small and unnoticeable as possible (even more so than usual). For all intents and purposes, Steve Rogers was invisible.

"Wow...there're a lot of guys gettin' killed over there."

And yet, each time, there was someone sitting with him on the world's least comfortable bench, trying to make conversation while they're both in their underwear.

"Mm-hmm," Steve grunted, as noncommittal as he possibly could. "Yeah," he tacked on a second later, retroactively feeling bad for not being more cordial. It wasn't this guy's fault that Steve was in an enlistment center for the fifth time since Pearl Harbor and that he _really_ didn't like being stripped down to his unmentionables for it.

"Kinda makes you think twice about enlisting, huh?" the man asked with a weak laugh, as if he wasn't sure if he was joking or not.

"Rogers, Steven!" 

_Baruch HaShem_. "Nope," Steve said firmly, shaking the newspaper back into shape and folding it down before rising and giving himself a similar re-arrangement. Not for the first time today he glanced around for any reflective surface with which to assess himself. He had finally gotten his medication in a week ago, but it had been so long between then and the last time his finances and the war had been kind enough to let it get to him, that he feared whatever muscle he'd been able to put on had disappeared again. 

The window, like the mirror at home before it, didn't provide much relief, even with Rebecca's encouraging eyes peering into it, accompanied by a thumbs-up sign. He tried to return a smile, along with his own gesture that she should stop peeking into a building stuffed full of half-naked men.

"Rogers, Steven," the medical examiner repeated, once Steve had entered his office.

"That'd be me," Steve said, seating himself on the examination table. "Good to meet...both of you," he said, as he glanced to the doctor's left and saw a woman sitting in a chair on the other side of the counter, a clipboard resting in her lap. Instinctively he angled his lower body, and his gaze, away from her; he felt a warmth spreading throughout his body and hoped to God that he wasn't turning pink.

"Don't mind me," the woman said, with a crisp English accent that matched the starched neatness of her uniform. "I assure you that I have authorization to be here."

"Miss Carter--" the doctor began.

" _Agent_ Carter, if you please."

"...Agent Carter is with the Strategic Scientific Reserve, an agency serving the military," the doctor continued, with some measure of exasperation in his voice. "She's here on a scouting assignment for a project that the SSR is working on. She'll be taking notes over the course of the exam."

Steve nodded. "Well I...I hope I can provide you what you're looking for, ma'am," he addressed Agent Carter.

"As do I, Mr. Rogers."

"All right, well, let's get this show on the road," the doctor muttered, picking a manila folder off the counter and flipping it open. Steve sat up straighter, puffing out his chest, and tried to relax his shoulders. To his eternal chagrin he felt his heartbeat start to pick up; the speed increased further when the doctor tugged the stethoscope he wore around his neck off and laid it on the counter. It was a bad sign when they skipped the physical to go straight to the interview.

"I see from your file that you are...without family?" the doctor said, with as much delicacy as his weariness of seeing hundreds of men a week would allow.

"My parents are both deceased, yes," Steve said, attempting evenness and achieving woodenness.

"What'd your father die of, and when?"

"Respiratory failure. About...15, 16 years ago."

"And what brought that on?"

"He, uh...he got exposed to mustard gas, the first time we were in Europe. He was in the 107th infantry." The doctor nodded his respect for Joseph Rogers's sacrifice, and Steve saw a glimmer of an opportunity. "I'm hoping I'll be assigned to the same unit."

He was met with a blank look. He glanced over at Agent Carter, whose gaze was assessing, but equally neutral.

"And what about your mother?" the doctor asked.

"She was a nurse in a TB ward," Steve said, feeling a hard tug at the corner of his mouth. "She took a hit a couple years ago. Couldn't shake it."

The doctor glanced down at the file. "Household exposure to tuberculosis, that's on here."

"She forced me out of the apartment when she realized she had it," Steve said, in a rush, as an invisible fist squeezed his heart; the fact that Sarah Rogers died alone in an unheated apartment, even if it was at her own request, was not something he had made peace with, nor would he ever. "And the people I stayed with, the Barnes; they don't have any history of TB."

"All right." The doctor didn't seem quite convinced. "But you do have a history of asthma?"

"I have a nebulizer." The latest model, or at least a new make of it, was a yearly birthday gift from George and Winifred, as reliable as the coat they gave him every winter. "It's under control."

"You understand that it's pretty hard to cart a nebulizer around Europe at this point in time?"

"I'll deal with it. Or, I'll do without it." He heard the scratching of Agent Carter's pen at her clipboard. "I lived my first twelve years without one; I can do it again."

To that the doctor didn't respond but to keep scanning the file in front of him. Steve knew the list by heart; could see it in his mind's eye. **HX** Asthma, Hypertension, Palpitations. **Childhood HX** Scarlet Fever, Rheumatic Fever. **Family HX** Diabetes. **Medications**

"What're you on Neo-Hombreol for?" the doctor asked, glancing up at Steve. "You're kinda young to be taking something like that."

"My body's got trouble processing testosterone," Steve recited automatically, as he did whenever some new medical professional found out about this particular treatment, through the old familiar stiffness in his jaw. He imagined he could feel Agent Carter's eyes burning holes into his skin. "It helps."

Agent Carter's head tilted slightly, before she returned to her notes. The physician's gaze ran up and down Steve's entire body, taking in the stunted height, the lack of muscle definition, the noticeably absent bulge between Steve's legs. Steve glared, but the way he shifted under the scrutiny belied his affected toughness.

"Sorry, kiddo."

"Just give me a chance," Steve said, seconds before his pride could tell him not to whine like a child, especially in front of Agent Carter.

"You're ineligible based on your asthma alone. And if you don't choke to death on the front lines, it'd be because your brothers-in-arms beat the life out of you in basic."

"At least let me _get_ to basic before you decide that," Steve grumbled, his conviction wearing off even as the words left his mouth. There wasn't any reason to believe that recruits would treat him any differently than civilians, after all. In fact two separate "last night before shipping out" parties in the last month had decided that what their festivities really needed was a punching bag in the form of Steve Rogers minding his own business on the way home from the store.

"Look, don't take it personal, all right?" the doctor said, with at least seemingly genuine sympathy; he pulled Steve's enlistment card from the manila folder and set it on the counter. "I admire your patriotism, I really do. Would that everyone had that sort of dedication; I see guys claiming a broken ankle from ten years ago makes them ineligible for service. But you, unlike them, _actually_ don't have the body for it. You'd hurt more than you'd help if I let them send you over."

"Pretty hard not to take that personal, doc," Steve said, sliding off the examination table and hating the extra second it took for his feet to hit the floor than it would have for, say, Bucky. 

"Agent Carter, you got anything to add?"

"I'm not making any decisions today," Agent Carter said, to Steve rather than the doctor. "I have access to your phone number through the information your provided to this office. If I decide that the SSR has need of your services, I will be in contact."

"Thank you very much, ma'am," Steve somehow managed to mumble through the hard lump of embarrassment that was forming in his throat. He could barely watch the doctor pull out the rubber 4F stamp and smash it down onto his card.

"Head out that way and take a left at the end of the hallway; it'll take you to where they put your personal belongings," the doctor said, gesturing to a door on the other side of his office. "I really am sorry, kid," he continued, as he handed Steve his enlistment card; Steve resisted the urge to crumple it up in his first. "But you know, there're lots of other things you can do to help out."

Steve let the door slam shut behind him.

*

Of course there would be a fucking advertisement for enlisting before the movie started.

Rebecca hadn't asked for details when he finally made his way out to her, for which he was thankful; she had merely hugged him and said that they had better go see a movie like they had told Bucky they were going to do this afternoon, before Bucky showed up at the theatre and they weren't there. She had let him pay for the tickets, for which he was also thankful.

"War continues to ravage Europe," the advertisement blared, over footage depicting the burnt-out husk of a field, a desolate village in the background. Steve bit his lip. "But help is on the way! Every able-bodied young man is lining up to serve his country." The ad cut to another scene depicting just that.

He felt Rebecca's fingers slide under and then over his upper arm and squeeze. He reached up and patted her hand.

"God, I am so sick of this ad," someone to Rebecca's right muttered. Steve snapped his head in the voice's direction, his lips pursing with annoyance.

"Even little Timmy is doing his part: collecting scrap metal," the ad continued, turning to an image of a child digging through a trash heap. "Nice work, Timmy!"

"Nice work, Timmy!" the same man parroted, his voice high and nasally, before snorting. "Gimme a break."

"Hey," Steve said in a loud whisper, leaning around Rebecca to get a better look at the offending party. "You mind keeping it down?"

"Meanwhile," the ad started up again, "overseas, our brave boys are showing the Axis powers that the price of freedom is never too high."

The scene cut to a heavily wounded soldier being carried on a stretcher. Rebecca's grip on Steve's arm tightened.

"Oh my God, can we just _get on with it!_ " the man to Rebecca's right said, louder this time; he turned in his seat to call up to the booth. "We get it, the troops are God damn heroes sent from heaven above; can we start the movie already?"

"You wanna shut up?" Steve barked, reaching over Rebecca's head to grab the man's arm, which he had begun waving in front of the projector. 

"The hell you care?" the man snarled, ripping his arm out of Steve's grasp. "What, you got a boyfriend over there or something?"

" _I_ do," Rebecca snapped; in the dark one could only barely make out her red face and glittering eyes. "And I would appreciate it if you would shut your mouth and show some respect."

"You got a boyfriend overseas, what're you doing here with this pansy?" the man sneered. "If you're gonna step out on your fella, at least do it with an _actual_ man."

No sooner did he put his hand on Rebecca's thigh that Steve, still partially stretched over her, hit him; he missed the man's ear, striking him instead on the side of his head. The man jerked towards the blow to retaliate, opening himself up to the slap Rebecca gave to his face.

"Is there a problem here?" A flashlight suddenly shone in Steve's eye, and he blinked; when his vision reoriented itself he made out the shape of an usher looming over them.

"No sir, there isn't," the offending party mumbled, sinking back down into his seat.

"Actually sir, yes there is," Steve said, loudly, standing up. "This man right here was disrupting the film with disrespectful remarks about the troops, and he started harassing my sister when she asked him to stop."

"That true, Miss?" the usher asked, flicking the light over to Rebecca.

Rebecca nodded, her mouth a thin, tightly-pressed-together line.

"I saw it," someone said from behind them. "That's exactly what happened."

"Yeah, he was being real rude," someone else to the left of them added. "Swore a few times and everything."

"I see." The usher finally turned his light onto the heckler. "Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"What?" the man yelped, leaping to his feet.

"You can pick up your refund at the box office," the usher continued calmly.

"I can't believe this! These two are the ones who assaulted _me_ just for having an opinion, and I'm the one getting thrown out? This is is bullshit!"

"Sir, if you continue to make a scene, the police will be called. Please gather your things and leave immediately."

The threat of police presence seemed to stymie him, but only a little. He took to mumbling under his breath as he turned to his seat, yanking his coat off the back of it with such force that he nearly whipped Rebecca in the face with the zipper. He only narrowly missed stomping on Steve's foot because Steve knew it was coming and jerked his feet out of the way, which seemed to anger him further; the usher was shoulder-checked, but took it in stride, and followed the man out the of theatre with dutiful weariness.

"Thank you for that," someone said, once the door to the theatre closed. There was a general murmur of assent and relief, and someone behind them patted Steve on the shoulder. He allowed himself to preen a bit under the praise, before slumping back into his seat under the weight of a certain realization.

"Whatcha wanna bet that I'm gonna pay for that?" he whispered to Rebecca, as the screen darkened in preparation to show the feature film.

"Me too," Rebecca whispered back, a grim smile on her face.

*

They made it exactly one block from the movie theatre.

Rebecca was the first to get it, as she passed an alleyway a few feet ahead of Steve and suddenly there was a hand on her braids yanking her into the opening. Steve's panicked yelp of "Becky!" was drowned out by her pained cry as she was dragged down to the pavement, and he sprinted into the alleyway after her, tackling her assailant with as much power as his limited momentum afforded him.

It worked; somewhat; the man had been crouched over her, and with his center of balance compromised Steve did force him to stumble, almost fall back. He recovered quickly, too quickly for Steve to get Rebecca properly back to her feet; Rebecca covered her head as the man reached over her, grabbed Steve by the collar, yanked him to Rebecca's left, and punched him squarely in the face.

"Steve!" Rebecca grabbed the man's leg from behind, distracting him long enough for Steve to regain his footing and charge him, but not long enough for Steve to make contact; the man caught the movement from the corner of his eye just in time to punch Steve again, this time knocking him back into a set of metal trash cans sitting next to a wooden fence.

_No, no, God no, I will not have an asthma attack here, I will not--_

Steve narrowly dodged a third blow to the face at the cost of toppling over the trash cans, scattering the blessedly little garbage, and the lids, on the ground. He kicked one of the cans towards his attacker, forcing the man back; he sent him back back even further when he grabbed one of the lids and threw it, clocking the man in the face.

Rebecca was on her feet now, and putting herself between the stranger and Steve; she had crouched by Steve and had nearly righted him when she was pulled by the back of her dress and thrown to the side. Steve struck out blindly, missing his target by inches and leaving just enough of an opening for the man to grab him by the shirt collar and hoist him up. Steve saw that he had given the guy a cut lip and the beginning of a black eye, and that measure of satisfaction was some comfort to him when he squinted his eyes shut in preparation for a broken nose.

It never came. Instead Steve was jerked to the side and then forcibly released; he blinked his eyes open once he found his balance and saw that Bucky Barnes had slammed his assailant into the fence and pinned him there with his whole body, one hand wrapped awkwardly but no less threateningly around the man's neck.

"The hell is your problem, asshole?" Bucky snarled through clenched teeth, letting up on the man slightly just to force him back into the fence with such violence that the wood rocked under the force. "What, you can't win a fight with anyone your own size so you pick on these two? Huh? Is that what it is, you piece of shit?" The hand Bucky had wrapped to the man's neck moved up, to press hard onto his face, distorting the flesh and cartilage under the pressure, forcing his head harder into the bowing wooden planks. "I _ever_ see you again, you're dead meat, is that clear?" The man tried to respond, but Bucky's palm smashed against his mouth rendered the noise an indecipherable groan. " _I said, is that clear?_ "

Bucky stumbled back when the stranger finally gathered up enough strength to shove him away. He moved to pin him again but found there was no need; by the time he relaxed his stance the man had beaten a hasty, clumsy retreat out of the alleyway.

"Steve, you mind leaving Becky out of your back alley scraps?" Bucky said, leaning down to help his sister up. "Ah, man..." he muttered, taking in the sight of her scraped knees and hands.

"I'm fine, Bucky, promise, Bucky I'm _fine_ ," Rebecca said, swatting her brother's hand away as he tried to brush dirt and gravel away from her wounds and off her dress. "Steve..."

Now that the adrenaline had worn off Bucky could hear the labor with which Steve was breathing, including the high-pitched noise that was telltale of an oncoming wheezing fit. "Oh, hell...Becky, here." He shoved his hand into his pocket and produced a few dollar bills. "Go get a cup of coffee for him."

"'m fine," Steve muttered between pants, but whether Rebecca heard him or not, she still took the money from Bucky's hand and darted away to do as bade.

"All right, Steve, you know the drill..." Bucky said, nevertheless feeling the need to assist Steve with leaning flush against the wall and then sliding down it, so he sat with his back straight. Steve stopped himself from batting Bucky away like Rebecca had when Bucky began brushing his hands over Steve's face to clear away dirt and check for any fractures.

"I swear to God, I really think you enjoy this," Bucky muttered.

"What, you touching me? Yeah, it's okay," Steve countered all in one breath; his attempt at a shit-eating grin was tempered somewhat by his pained expression.

"Don't be a brat," Bucky said, resisting the urge to swat Steve or even pull his ear; at this point Steve could either recover somewhat gracefully or plunge headfirst into an asthma attack depending on if any other triggers presented themselves. "Your nose is bleeding," he said, and now that Bucky mentioned it Steve felt the little trickle of blood running down over his upper lip. "Here..."

"No Bucky, don't..." Steve said, pulling his face away from Bucky's ministering fingers. "Don't...ruin your uniform."

"Enh, I gotta christen it one way or the other," Bucky said jovially, but nevertheless he pulled his sleeve further down his arm before wiping away the blood with his thumb. "A sergeant's gotta look like he's been in a few fights, right? Otherwise the men won't respect him."

Steve had a really hard time imagining anyone not respecting Bucky. He had almost worked up the energy to say as much when Rebecca reappeared in the alleyway, clutching a paper cup with coffee stains already splashed onto the side of it.

"It's not very good coffee," she said apologetically, a little breathless herself, as she came to kneel beside Steve.

"As long as it's got caffeine it's fine," Bucky said, taking the cup from Rebecca, stopping himself before he put it to Steve's lips himself, and handing it to Steve instead. "So. You mind telling me what all this was about, Becks? You know better than to let Steve get to this point."

"It was nothing."

Bucky sighed, loudly. "Rebecca _Pearl_ \--"

"It was just some jerk in the movie theatre," she said, compelled to honesty by the use of her middle name but nonetheless sullen over it. "He was being real disrespectful about the troops."

"She was getting upset," Steve added quietly over the cup of coffee.

"Steve and I both told him to knock it off, and he made a pass at me. Put his hand on my leg." Bucky suddenly looked like he genuinely wished he had strangled the man when he had the chance. "So Steve hit him, and I slapped him--"

"Good girl."

"--and then the usher came and threw the jerk out. Guess he waited for us to finish the movie. And that's where you found us."

"...All right. Well, I'm glad you stood up to him, both of you." His expression did not fully confirm his words. "Just don't make this a habit, okay? If I'd shown up any later..."

"I won't," Rebecca said. "He just...he made me so mad," she continued, in an increasingly smaller voice. "Guys are dying over there, and he thinks he can be flippant about it..."

"Hey." She didn't look up when Bucky slung his arm around her shoulder, though she did lean into the embrace. "Bruce is coming back, okay? He's not dead. You'd know it if he was. Right?" He jostled her a little, to show his confidence; she made a noncommittal noise. "You'd know it," he repeated firmly, tucking her head under his chin. "Steve? How you feelin'?"

"Better," Steve said, at the tail end of a swallow.

"All right. I'm gonna hail a cab. We'll get you back to the house and let you have a few minutes with the nebulizer, get you both cleaned up, and then head out again when Mom and Dad get home, okay?"

"Oh yeah, I forgot," Rebecca said, sounding a little strangled at first, though her voice cleared up as she finished her sentence. "We're going to some thing tonight. Some boring thing."

"Shut up," Bucky chided, dunking Rebecca out from under his arm while she giggled.

"I agree with Becky's assessment," Steve said, his obnoxious smile better enunciated this time.

"I'm surrounded by Philistines," Bucky muttered. Rebecca straightened herself out a moment after to take the pressure off her knees, inspecting her cuts and bruises now that there was nothing more pressing to occupy her attention. "Becks, you go hail the cab, okay? More cars're gonna stop for a pretty lady no matter how good-looking I also am."

"You. Stop it." Bucky dodged being swatted on the head, and Rebecca trotted off to the sidewalk.

"Keep sipping that coffee," Bucky ordered Steve, and Steve dutifully obeyed. "You two are gonna be the death of me," Bucky muttered, just loud enough for Steve to hear, but for all the grumbling he still pivoted on the balls of his feet to sit properly next to Steve rather than crouching in front of him. He turned his head to watch his sister, but his hand went to Steve's, nudging it a few times before he let his three middle fingers rest at an angle across Steve's palm. After a second Steve curled his own fingers around them and shut his eyes. There was no telling how long it would take a cab to appear, and if it wasn't a long wait, better for Steve to have already gotten that which calmed him down the most before he had to move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> President Roosevelt ended voluntary enlistment in favor of a reorganized draft system on December 5th, 1942, so this story actually begins in late 1942, not in 1943 as in the movie.
> 
> "Baruch HaShem" is a Jewish saying, literally translating to "Blessed be the Name" and roughly translating to "Thank God". It is useful for many situations ranging from the completely genuine to the utterly sarcastic.
> 
> During WWI very few men actually died immediately of mustard gas exposure (only around 6,000 altogether). It'd be more likely for Joseph Rogers to have died of related complications after the war.
> 
> By 1930 at-home nebulizers were available for asthmatics (inhalers as we know them weren't available for another 30 years).
> 
> Got the names for Bucky's family from [this](http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/James_Buchanan_Barnes_%28Earth-616%29).
> 
> HX is an abbreviation for "history of".
> 
> Neo-Hombreol was a testosterone cream treatment that became available to the American public in 1939. It was historically prescribed to 60+ y/o men as an anti-impotence medication.
> 
> Caffeinated beverages can provide relief after an asthma attack by relaxing the airways. (Paper cups were invented in the early 1900s; I couldn't find if there were any coffeehouses such as we understand them, but Rebecca could have gotten coffee to go from a diner.) Sitting up straight is also recommended.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TW: mild body dysphoria**

"Steve?"

"Yeah?" Steve said, pulling his face back from the nebulizer to respond.

"This was in your pocket." Bucky was leaning in the doorway, Steve's ripped pants in one hand; the 4F, as Steve had begun to think of it, brandished in the other. "This is what, four times now?"

"Five."

"Five? Okay, so there's one time I don't know about."

"Yeah. I went once while you were away at basic."

"Wow. That's _really_ behind my back. I'm genuinely hurt." Steve rolled his eyes and returned to his treatment. "There's gotta be some other allure to this than the call of duty, Steve. Is there someone down there at the enlistment center you're carryin' a torch for?"

"Shut up." Steve inhaled a huge gulp of aerosolized medication.

"I knew it. There's a cute doctor, right? Cute _nurse_ , maybe?"

"Actually this time there _was_ a woman," Steve said, putting his hands on the desk and shoving his chair back, standing up as violently as he could. "Real good-looking. Real _smart_ , too; she's an agent, works for the Strategic Scientific Reserve. She was there scouting for some special project. And I had to explain why I take Neo right in front of her."

Bucky's playfully teasing smile melted off his face, replaced by a grimace. "Did you have to...show her?"

"No, thankfully, I didn't have to put _all_ my inadequacies on display."

"Hey." Steve's eyes had glued themselves to the floor and refused to look up when summoned. " _Hey_ ," Bucky said again, waiting for Steve to move; after two seconds in which he did not, Bucky moved for him, dropping both the 4F and Steve's pants along the way. Steve swayed a bit as one of Bucky's hands slipped around his shoulders, and the other slipped between his legs, and then he couldn't help it; his arms were wrapped around Bucky and he had pulled himself flush against his boyfriend before he even realized that Bucky had duped him out of his stubborn inertia.

"Last I checked this was plenty adequate," Bucky said quietly, his voice halfway between a statement of fact and an attempt at seduction. He wasn't applying any pressure beyond maintaining a cupped hand; he instead let Steve bear down on him when he laid a kiss on the juncture of Steve's neck and shoulder, right where he knew it would make Steve go weak in the knees.

"I hate you," Steve muttered, counter-intuitively trying to regain his balance and his slipping composure by clinging tighter to Bucky.

"Mmhmm," Bucky hummed, lightly sucking another kiss on the same spot (not hard enough to leave a mark; that was one bruise they wouldn't be able to explain). "I know. I'm awful. Just the worst."

"And it's not adequate enough for the _army_ , apparently," Steve grumbled through clenched teeth, trying to not enjoy Bucky's attentions as much as he was, or at least to not let them distract him. "Not like I'm gonna be taking my clothes off in the middle of battle so I don't see why it matters."

"Mm, people do see you naked in the army," Bucky said, as if he routinely made light conversation out of such topics while kissing Steve Rogers' neck.

This news made Steve pull back a little. "Who's been seeing you naked, Buck?"

"Guys!" Rebecca called; they jumped away from each other before it registered that she was yelling up at them from downstairs. "Mom and Dad are home!"

"Okay, thanks!" Bucky called back. "I guess we'll have to take a raincheck on this?" he addressed Steve, with a weak, almost pained smile.

"Oh, you're going to be telling me who's been seeing you naked later, Buck; don't worry about that."

"Speaking of, maybe you should get some pants on," Bucky said, glancing pointedly at Steve's lower body. "Some _intact_ pants," he clarified, when Steve moved to pick his ripped pair off the floor. "Don't give Mom any more ammunition. She's already gonna flip her wig when she sees your eye."

*

Winifred Barnes did indeed spend half an hour flipping her proverbial wig. Rebecca had put on a longer dress to hide her skinned knees, but her hands couldn't be patched and camouflaged that easily, to say nothing of the multicolored bruise Steve was beginning to sport on his face. She demanded a name, which they did not have; a description, which they gave up begrudgingly; she had ordered George to put their lawyer on notice and was reaching for the telephone to call the police before Bucky intercepted, reminding her that it was his _last night_ and he _really wanted to enjoy it_ ; the cops _probably wouldn't be able to find him anyway_ and they _shouldn't waste everyone's time_.

She didn't appreciate his blatant manipulation, and she told him as much, but she did allow it to work on her, much to her husband's relief.

The World Exposition of Tomorrow was a shadow of the New York World's Fair that Bucky had dragged them to three years ago, taking up only a few dozen acres as opposed to over one thousand, but one wouldn't know it judging by the smile that lit up Bucky's face once the metal globe, towering several hundred feet over the pavement, came into view. Steve had been ready to make a smart remark about where scrap metal was going these days, and also about how the gunpowder going into the fireworks that set off every few minutes could certainly be of more use for actual guns, but George parked the car, Bucky nearly tore his door off its hinges in his rush to get out, and Steve kept his mouth shut. There wasn't much that got Bucky childlike-excited anymore, and it wouldn't be fair to actively spoil the evening for him.

Instead, Steve sulked. It was easier now that they were too old to hold hands without getting nasty looks; Bucky didn't have to feel Steve's dead weight as they hopped from exhibit to exhibit, except for when Bucky grabbed his arm to pull him along, and he seemed too engaged with the materials presented to really notice Steve's demeanor even when he did so.

Winifred, however, was not.

"Are you all right, dear?" she asked, when Bucky had been closer to Rebecca and so had grabbed his sister instead of Steve to pull her towards an exhibit on televisions that promised these magic boxes would have at least 50 channels in the future. "Did you hit your head earlier?"

"No. Well, yes," it was hard to lie to Winifred despite her propensity to overreact, "but my head is fine. It's not hurting me."

"Then are you sick?"

"No."

She nonetheless put the back of her hand to his forehead. His lack of a temperature didn't seem to reassure her. "Well, _something's_ gotten under your skin."

"I'm _fine_ ," Steve said, trying to draw out the last word in a whine, hoping she would begin to think that she was being ridiculous.

No dice. "Now I know better than to trust you on that, Steve," Winifred said, shaking her finger at him, and he had to laugh. "Come on, out with it."

"It's nothin', Aunt Win," Steve said, with what he hoped was a genuine-looking smile. "I'm just feelin' out of sorts today."

"Is it because of James? Because he's leaving tomorrow?"

She hadn't acknowledged the concreteness of that fact aloud until this moment, Steve realized. Even when Bucky came back from his own trip to the enlistment center with A1 stamped on his card, even when he got his orders to report for basic training, even when he came back home to spend his last two weeks before shipping out, Winifred had never acknowledged a date. It had been "when Bucky leaves" this whole time, as vague and unscheduled as "when Steve gets married" and "when Rebecca has children" and "when I'm not around anymore". He hadn't realized until now, now that his intestines had suddenly knotted themselves around each other, that he'd been thinking of it the same way.

"I know it's got to be hard for you," Winifred continued when Steve didn't answer immediately, with a glassy-eyed look that was starting to betray how hard it was for her, as well. "You two've been joined at the hip since you were 11 years old..."

"I should be going," Steve said thickly. "I should be going with him. It's _right_ , Aunt Win. It's the right thing to do."

"I know it is," she said, but she wasn't seeing that truth; she was watching her firstborn chatter at his sister and father about how electricity worked, leaning over the exhibit railing to point out this and that doodad beyond her comprehension, but that she appreciated for its ability to light Bucky up from the inside. "That's why he's going. That's why you want to go. You both have such good hearts..."

Her breath hitched, and her hand went to her mouth, to stop her lip from trembling; when she didn't recover by herself after a few seconds Steve gently touched her arm. Her hand fell away from her face, to grip his elbow, and the smile she gave him was grateful and watery.

"I'm not going to lie, Steve, I'm glad they won't take you. I wish they wouldn't've taken James, either. I don't want you two gallivanting around Europe getting shot at. But since he _is_ going, part of me almost wishes that...wishes that you _could_ go, too. Just so I'd know someone on that Godforsaken continent was going to look out for him. Have his back."

"I don't know that I'd be much help," Steve said, and a sardonic laugh made its way out with his words; his hands had begun shaking and he clenched them into fists. "The army certainly doesn't think I would be."

"Well they can go hang," Winifred spat. "You _would_ be. I know you. You'd find your way to help, Steve. You always do. I just wish you could find it by staying close to my boy."

"Mom! Steve!" Bucky called, over Steve wondering, not for the first time, how much Winifred knew. "The Stark presentation's starting! Hurry up!"

Winifred sighed out whatever else she had wanted to say, or couldn't, and snaked her arm around Steve's. "Come on. Let's enjoy him while we can."

The crowd around the Stark presentation was thick, and it took some concerted pushing and shoving--Winifred being Steve's height, and only slightly less frail--before they made their way to Bucky, Rebecca, and George. Amid applause and whistles, a jazz band heralded a line of chorus girls filing onto the stage to pose in front of what was obviously a car with a brown tarp draped over it; the performer furthest stage left vamped her way to the microphone, pressed it close to her cherry-red lips, and seemed to be inordinately excited to say into it, "Ladies and gentleman, I present to you Mister! Howard! Stark!"

The crowd broke into cheers--someone in the back yelled "We love you, Howard!"--as the titular man strode onstage, an impeccably groomed tuxedo-clad gentleman in his early 50s who pulled his announcer into his arms and leaned in close to plant a kiss on her mouth.

"Just kidding; I'm married," he said into the microphone, turning away from his chorus girl just before their lips could touch. She snuck a kiss anyway, on his cheek; the crowd laughed as he shooed her away and wiped her lipstick off his face with a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket.

"Very classy, Howard," an English accent said somewhere to Steve's left, and Steve glanced over to find Agent Carter standing not three feet away from them, her arms crossed, her expression sternly amused. As if led by some spirit, she turned her head at that exact moment, catching Steve's eye and holding it for longer than he expected her to. Unsure of what else to do he lifted his hand in a small wave; she nodded at him, before turning her eyes back to the stage.

"Ladies and gentleman," Howard continued, "what would you say if I told you that in a few short years, your automobile..." the chorus girls pulled the draping away to reveal the car underneath, "won't even have to touch the ground in order to move?" He turned away from the audience, towards a small switchboard set up to the left of the microphone. "With Stark Enterprises' innovative technology," he pressed a button, "by the end of this decade," he pulled a lever, "you could have your very own, personal, flying car."

There was the sound of power surging, and then air being released. Steve, who hadn't torn his gaze away from Agent Carter, finally looked towards the stage when he felt Bucky lightly smacking his arm with the back of his hand. The car, to the crowd's vocal amazement, was rising off the floor, coming to hover several inches above the stage.

"Holy cow," Bucky said under his breath, transfixed. "Steve, d'you see this?"

"I see it," Steve whispered back, impressed despite himself.

"No wires, I promise," Howard said, breaking the stunned tension and allowing the audience to laugh. "This levitation technology is something we at Stark Enterprises have been developing to help our boys overseas fight the Nazi and Japanese threat. My own son Tony, in fact, is in Italy right now promoting some highly advanced, highly classified weapons that make use of this very same tech, so don't tell anyone I told you about it."

The crowd laughed again; out of the corner of his eye Steve saw Agent Carter roll her eyes.

"But Stark Enterprises is looking beyond the war," Howard continued, gesturing to the band with one hand, who took his cue to begin playing a soft underscore to his speech. "We owe the men putting their lives on the line for our future the very best version of that future that our money and ingenuity can provide." He was met with an affirming round of applause and cheers. From the other side of Bucky, George clapped a hand on his son's shoulder and didn't let go for a long time. "This exposition is designed to give each and every one of you a vision of what the world will be like once the war is won. So please, use this beautiful evening to take in the exhibits, and let them inspire you to think of what _you_ can contribute to the world of tomorrow."

"A peaceful sky / There are such things," the band's lead singer crooned into her own microphone, as the music swelled under her; on stage Howard turned knobs and pulled levers, gently swaying the car to and fro to show off for his captive audience. "A rainbow high / Where heaven sings / So have a little faith / And trust in what tomorrow brings / You'll reach a star," the black backdrop behind the car suddenly lit up with glittering stars, and the audience gasped and murmured its appreciation. Steve felt Bucky's hand, for the smallest of seconds, brush his own. "Because there are such things..."

"Enjoy your night, folks."

Howard Stark exited the stage to thunderous applause and the band playing him out, and as soon as he was gone Steve turned his head to look at Agent Carter again. Her face was soft, sporting a fond smile, but her arms were crossed to stand firm against the crowd that had begun surging against her in their attempt to leave.

"Hey." Bucky elbowed Steve lightly in the arm, prompting one of the very rare times Steve was reluctant to pay attention to him. "There's a dining area somewhere in the park; you wanna go get something to eat? I'm startin' to get hungry."

"I could eat too," Rebecca piped up from the other side of Bucky. "But, um...I actually have to use the ladies' room first, if you don't mind?" She jerked her chin in the direction of the restrooms some twenty feet away. Bucky audibly groaned when he saw the line stretching out from the door marked LADIES.

"Here, why don't you and your folks go get food," Steve said, seeing the opportunity and seizing it. "I'll wait here for Becky and then we'll join you."

"You know where it is?" Bucky asked; Steve brandished the map that had been thrust upon him by an attendant at the entrance of the expo. "All right, I guess that works," he conceded, glancing at his parents, who shrugged their agreement to the plan of action. "You guys want anything in particular?"

"Anything's fine."

"Same," Rebecca added.

"All right, pond scum for Steve, gorilla feet for Becky. Got it."

"Get outta here," Steve muttered, aiming a playful smack at Bucky's shoulder. Bucky dodged it, then saluted smartly once he had righted himself, and Steve wondered if it was obvious how his breath caught in his throat to see Bucky even jokingly stand at attention. It held him stricken for several seconds, even after Bucky and his parents strolled away, Winifred giving her usual raised-voice warnings to not let Rebecca talk to strange men, and to ask an employee for help if they got lost.

"Rogers, wasn't it? Steven Rogers," Agent Carter said from directly behind Steve, as soon as Rebecca had left Steve grumbling that she wasn't eight years old anymore, and Steve nearly jumped out of his skin.

"Yeah, that's me," Steve said, turning around hoping that his startled reaction hadn't been too obvious. "Fancy...fancy seeing you here, Agent Carter."

"It's "Peggy" on my downtime, no need to be so formal."

"Right. Peggy. Got it. And it's..."Steve" for me. No one calls me "Steven" but doctors and teachers."

"Very well. Steve."

"So, um..." Steve said, after Peggy said no more for several seconds. "What brings you here?"

"Howard." She nodded towards the stage. "He's a friend, of sorts. I had the evening to myself, so I thought I'd come see his presentation." Steve bobbed his head. "And you?"

"For a friend, same reason. Bucky--my friend--he's into this sort of thing; technology, science. He's shipping out tomorrow, so we--me and his family--took him out for his...his last hurrah, I guess."

Peggy raised an eyebrow. "This is a rather tame last hurrah."

"Bucky's not that wild a guy." Everyone who had made his acquaintance thought he would be, the Barnes having "more money than God" as Steve's grandmother had put it, with Bucky being the beloved only son with nothing but the limits of his imagination to rein in his spending and partying. Most people didn't believe Winifred when she bragged about her "good boy" spending almost all of his evenings at home reading cheap paperbacks in the parlor while Steve sketched, and coming home at a reasonable hour on those occasions when he and Steve did go out.

"Oh, I'm not making fun," Peggy said. "Far from it. I'd much rather see the Allied forces staffed with thoughtful intellectuals than the bundles of raging testosterone I deal with every day."

Steve drew in a breath. Peggy's gaze was leveled on him, serene but unwavering.

"Well, I...I wish the whole army thought like you," Steve finally managed to say.

"That makes two of us. If it doesn't, it's not for lack of trying. On either of our parts." She quirked an eyebrow at him. "I looked at your record. Today was not your first attempt at enlisting."

"Yeah, it was...it was the fifth. I've tried at other centers."

"Your tenacity is admirable."

He had to laugh. "Just not very fruitful."

She tilted her head again, her gaze no less focused but a tad softer now. "I know a little bit of what that's like. To have every door you knock on slammed in your face." Steve stopped himself from rolling his eyes, but apparently not soon enough to keep his facial expression from turning incredulous. "What is it?"

"Just wondering who would slam the door on a beautiful dame like you," Steve said, before thinking about it. "Beautiful...woman," Steve corrected, once Peggy's eyebrows shot up into her hairline and he was suddenly very much so thinking about it. "Person. Agent."

"Flattering me will get you absolutely nowhere, on _any_ front." Her arms were crossed again; her eyes narrowed.

"What? Oh, no, I wasn't trying to--to make a pass at you. Honest. And I didn't mean to imply you weren't _capable_ either, I mean, obviously you're great at what you do, they wouldn't let you do it if you weren't; I just...I mean, you're very..." It had suddenly gotten very hot, and he willed his blood pressure to go down before it triggered his heartbeat like the gunshot at the start of a race triggered a horse.

"Is this your first time talking to a woman?" She was still glaring at him, but her tone had something like amusement in it.

"That I'm not related to? Pretty much," Steve said, in one relieved whoosh of air, thankful that he made it out of that gaffe without another black eye. "I'm not exactly the...attractive-to-girls type." Not that he'd been particularly trying to attract them, except for when he and Bucky had gone too long without a lady friend and they needed to throw people off.

"There was a girl standing with you, before."

"Becky? God no. She's Bucky's sister. She's practically _my_ sister." The thought had crossed his mind, in those moments when the knowledge that he and Bucky could never have exactly what they wanted was heavy upon him, but his revulsion at the idea was instant and complete. He could never do that to her, or to Bucky. "She's got a boyfriend overseas, anyway. A _real_ good guy, and real smart. He'd love this place." Steve waved a hand to indicate the expo. Bucky had tried to pull the "overprotective big brother" act on Bruce, but it had been hard to be intimidating with a man who shared so many of his hobbies. "He's MIA but...we haven't given up on him yet," he continued, with a weak smile.

"I'm so sorry to hear that he's missing." Steve mumbled a thank-you. "So," she continued, after a respectful pause. "Every eligible man you know is going or has gone, I take it."

"Seems so."

"And you're very keen on joining them, it would appear."

"Guilty as charged." He attempted a stronger smile than the one he was currently wearing.

"Might I ask why that is?"

"Steve?"

Steve had opened his mouth to respond, and it had hung open for several seconds before the sound of his name gave him an excuse to turn away from Peggy. Bucky was several feet away, a bag of popcorn in hand.

"So it turns out that it's not so much a dining area as it is a bunch of concession stands," Bucky continued, meandering up to Steve, his eyes glued to Peggy. "Mom'n'Dad are picking out what they want still. Thought you'd like some of these." He offered the bag to Steve with his peripheral vision, as his gaze was mainly busy sweeping Peggy, taking in her neatly styled hair and perfectly ironed uniform. "Who is this?"

"Agent Margaret Carter, of the Strategic Scientific Reserve," Peggy answered, offering her hand. "Steve and I met earlier today. You must be..."Bucky", Steve referred to you as."

"Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, "Bucky" to my friends; charmed," Bucky said, taking Peggy's hand with somewhat noticeable reservation. He glanced over at Steve, to see if this was a situation he needed helping extricating himself from; Steve indicated that he was fine with a certain tilt of his head.

Peggy seemed to suss out the nature of this interaction, because she spoke again. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Sergeant Barnes. Thank you for your service."

"Oh, well..." Bucky shifted his weight. "Ain't served yet."

"Pre-emptively, then," Peggy said, without missing a beat. "Steve and I were just discussing his desire to serve as well."

"That so?" Bucky said, feeling his jaw tighten of its own volition even as he tried to keep his tone light. Steve suddenly became very fascinated with his shoes.

"Indeed. I must confess, he left quite an impression on me this afternoon. His determination to serve the Allied effort is laudable."

"Yeah, he's pretty stuck on the idea," Bucky said, laying a very heavy hand on Steve's arm.

"Hey! Sorry that took so long, that line was nuts..." Rebecca approached the group at a brisk jog, slowing a bit once she realized that Bucky was back, and that he was not Steve's only companion.

"No worries, kiddo," Bucky said, turning his head to face her but not relinquishing Steve; if anything his hold on Steve tightened. "Turns out it's just a bunch of snack stands. But Mom and Dad are still over there deciding what to get, so we should probably go meet up with them." He glanced back at Peggy. "By your leave, of course, ma'am."

"By all means, don't let me hold you up," Peggy said, her face very purposely neutral. "I'm waiting for a friend myself, anyway. It was very nice meeting you."

"Same," Bucky said, like a rock falling from his hand.

"Good seeing you again," Steve said, trying not to squirm too noticeably in Bucky's grip.

"Oh, Steve," Peggy said, staying the two as Bucky started to pull them away; if she noticed the glare on Bucky's face she made no indication of it. "Make sure you don't miss any phone calls, would you?"

For a brief euphoric moment Steve wasn't aware of anything but nodding yes to Peggy's request. The moment ended when Bucky jerked him, hard, causing him to nearly trip over his feet. He gave Peggy a glance once he had righted himself, as if to assure her that he was fully capable of recovering after any mishap. She nodded and turned away, as if giving him permission to stop trying to impress her.

"Who was that?" Rebecca asked, glancing back at Peggy once they were safely out of earshot.

"Nobody special," Bucky said, before Steve could reply; Steve made to repudiate Bucky's usurpation, and was silenced with a very hard pinch to his upper arm. "Steve just likes girls in uniform, I think."

"Well, he's not wrong," Steve said, after racking his brain for an appropriate response to that; out of the corner of his eye he signaled Rebecca that he would fill her in later.

"Oh, remind me not to join the WAAC, then," Rebecca said with a carefully crafted joking smile, after catching Steve's silent communication and a similar mental search for an apt reply.

"You better not," Bucky snapped, almost growled, bringing both Rebecca and Steve up short. "I ain't losin' _both_ of you to this stupid God damn war."

"Buc--" Steve started, but Bucky let go of his arm with a roughness that said he would brook no argument at this point in time. Rebecca replaced it with a touch that asked Steve to not push the issue, and for once in his life, he didn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Howard's band is playing an excerpt from "There Are Such Things", which was published in 1942 (although it didn't hit the Billboard charts until 1943). [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNrGGnS0qh4) is a version by Frank Sinatra.
> 
> For more information on the WAAC (Women's Auxiliary Army Corps), see [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_Army_Corps).


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was supposed to have something *other than* Steve and Bucky having emotional sex, but they kinda took over. For a lesbian I sure do write a lot about two guys doin' it :D
> 
> **TW: Holocaust references. Gonna put in a warning for intimations of body dysphoria and period-appropriate racial insensitivity, just in case**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Normally I'd put notes after the chapter, but I feel like you'd benefit from knowing this ahead of time.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I am not an endocrinologst or any sort of scientist, nor do I have the condition of which I speak. I fully welcome any and all correction of my research and the assumptions I make based thereupon.
> 
> Steve has [between Grade 2 and Grade 3 Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_androgen_insensitivity_), which very broadly/roughly means that his body produces androgens but has a difficult time processing them. This condition, along with malnutrition (remember that Steve grew up poor during the Great Depression) and genetics, contributes to his [difficulty with putting on muscle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen#Muscle_mass) as well as his [short stature](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17077943). The condition would have most likely given him [a high voice and a case of gynecomastia (breast tissue growth)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome#Signs_and_symptoms); in this story his [voice was lowered](http://mentalfloss.com/article/50360/what-determines-what-your-voice-sounds) by the [testosterone](https://books.google.com/books?id=bT_2oWnOaXgC&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=hombreol+1931&source=bl&ots=WdzQi7l9X0&sig=FTj-mXF5NCHnAbIXngd7JAcE8qM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAWoVChMIgdfYoZW4yAIVR4I-Ch2YVQAd#v=onepage&q=hombreol%201931&f=false) he's been taking since 1937/age 19. The testosterone may have somewhat shrunk the breast tissue as well (again, in conjunction with poor nutrition), especially since he wouldn't necessarily have had huge breasts to begin with. (If you stare hard enough at [pre-serum Steve's chest](https://grumpyfanboy.wordpress.com/category/captain-america-2/page/2/), you could argue that there is some breast tissue growth there, just not very much.)
> 
> Look [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome#/media/File:Quigley_scale_for_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome.jpg) for a visual representation of what Steve's genitals look like. If you don't want to look, basically, Steve was born with a very small penis. The testosterone he's on has lengthened it, but it's still smaller than average (around 3 inches erect, as opposed to the standard 5 inches). He also has [penoscrotal hypospadias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypospadias) (warning: image on page; basically he pees from the base of his penis, rather than the tip) and [chordee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chordee) (warning: image on page; basically the head of the penis curves downward). Steve has no feminine reproductive organs, just undervirilized masculine ones. Steve is also infertile.
> 
> As for Steve's sex life, based on [a study of someone with a similar history of testosterone treatment](http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jc.2002-021658), Steve is able to have orgasmic sex, but cannot ejaculate. I couldn't find out if the size of the prostate (which tends to be smaller in men with PAIS) affects its sensitivity, so to be safe we'll say that Bucky is very considerate and always gives Steve a handjob during sex, so they've never tested the "can Steve get off on butt stuff by itself" theory for themselves.
> 
> Steve IDs as male and has complicated feelings towards his condition...which is not formally diagnosed, since it wasn't fully described in medical literature until after WWII. Any given medical professional would refer to him either as [intersex, or as a male pseudohermaphrodite.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudohermaphroditism)

"So? When are you leaving? Do you know yet?"

Steve released the breath he had been holding for the past six or so hours. Leaving aside his singular outburst, Bucky had spent the rest of the evening being overly chipper, running his family ragged around the expo. Steve hadn't loved Bucky for fourteen years to to not feel personally exhausted when he was faking vivacity, especially when he himself was the other shoe he was waiting to drop. Between that, and imagining he saw Peggy in every woman they passed at the expo (seriously, how popular could her haircut, her lipstick, her perfume possibly be?), the arrival of a confrontation he knew was coming was something of a relief.

"I'm not even sure if I _am_ leaving yet, Buck," Steve said, closing the sketchbook he had been agitatedly doodling in ever since he had excused himself to his room, sensing that George and Winifred wanted some time alone with their firstborn, and wanting some time to himself to prepare for the inevitable, anyway. "She didn't make me any promises. I don't even, strictly speaking, know what she would want me _for_. They didn't give me any details on this special project thing the SSR is doing."

In response Bucky went to the record player Steve kept beside his bed, a gift from the Barnes "for your...bar mitzi thing; it's important, right?" (it took a while for George and Winifred to wrap their heads around even the most rudimentary of Jewish terms and customs; Steve hadn't even bothered to try teaching them anything Oneida because of it) that he had lovingly maintained for twelve years despite numerous offers to replace it with a newer model. Bucky grabbed the first record he saw, pulled it from its sleeve, and set it in the player.

"Should I be excited or worried?" Steve asked dryly. Putting on a record this late meant that they were going to have either an argument or sex, and either would need to be drowned out. Steve's bedroom, a converted guest room on the second floor, was not directly below the family's bedrooms on the third, but a cover noise made them feel a bit safer.

Bucky waited until Bing Crosby started singing to sit at Steve's desk chair--Steve himself had been sitting cross-legged atop the desk; an uncommon nervous tick, but it made him feel tall--to speak again.

"What are you going to do when you're two minutes into the obstacle course at basic and your throat closes up, Steve?"

Steve slid the sketchbook off his lap and onto the desk beside him. "Why are you so convinced that I can't pull this off?"

"Because you almost had an asthma attack today after being punched in the face _twice_ , and in case you haven't noticed, the European theatre is a bit of a bigger deal than some creep in an alley!" Bucky hissed, trying not to raise his voice.

"So what are my options, Buck?" Steve shot back, internally wincing that he had no proper counter-argument. "What would you have me do instead?"

" _Literally anything else_ , Steve! There are so many important jobs here that you could be doing."

"What, you want me to break out my little red wagon again and go begging for scrap metal this time?"

"The thing's still in storage; I could go get it for you right now."

"Oh come on Buck, let me have a _little_ more dignity than that."

"Fine. Sell war bonds. Work in a factory. _Something_."

"A factory? You really want me to do that, Buck? There are less fumes in an open battlefield even _with_ gas attacks."

"You would _find_ something--"

"Bucky--"

"--if you would stop being so pigheaded and actually _look_ \--"

"Bucky!" Steve yelled, and Bucky slammed his mouth shut into a tight, thin frown before he could counter at a louder volume. "Come on, now. Perfectly healthy, fit guys are laying down their lives over there. You, and Bruce, and everyone else who's signed up are taking the exact same risk that I'm trying to take."

"That's bullshit and you know it."

"All right, fine," Steve snapped, feeling the fire in his chest spread up to his face. "Maybe I _will_ choke on my own breath in basic, or have a heart attack on the front lines, or maybe I'll get shot like anyone else. I'm _okay_ with that."

"Steve!"

"If I'm not going to make it past 40 anyway at least let me die doing something _worthwhile_."

"Damn it Steve, don't you _ever_ say--"

"Why did you sign up, Bucky, huh?" Steve interrupted, trying to ignore the shake that had crept into Bucky's voice, and into his own. "Why are you going? We _know_ what's happening over there." The letter from Kovno, arriving months after it should have, from a place it shouldn't have, after passing through so many couriers that shouldn't have had to know it existed let alone smuggled it across a continent and an ocean, sat inside Steve's desk drawer, but it might as well have been in his hand, crumpled in his fist and soaked with tears, his and Bucky's both, like the day he finally got it after nearly a year of radio silence. "We _know_ what the Nazis are doing. So many people are suffering and being killed and we can _do something_ about it."

"Steve..."

"I have _no_ right to do any less than you're doing, Bucky. If anything I have an obligation to do _more_."

"Steve." Steve tried to be unmoved when Bucky grabbed both his wrists, but it was a hard attitude to maintain in the face of how broken Bucky's voice had gotten, how his touch was so strong and so kind all at once. "You getting yourself killed is not going to bring them back."

"I know that," Steve said, in a voice he hoped was firm because he couldn't force himself to meet Bucky's eyes. "But I can't save anyone else if I stay here."

Bucky was silent for a long while, his head bowed, his thumbs worrying against Steve's protruding wrist bones. The movement turned into an inspection of Steve's hands, turning them over, tugging lightly on his fingers, tracing the lines of his palms. Bucky finally settled the pads of two fingertips over Steve's pulse; Steve felt it beat against the pressure.

"Don't take this the wrong way," Bucky said, in a low, strangled voice, "but I hope that when you get to basic, you break your leg."

"I love you too, Buck."

"I hope you break it in at least three places. Actually, I hope you get paralyzed from the waist down. I hope you hit your head and fall into a coma and don't wake up until the war is over. I hope you--"

Bucky choked, and suddenly he had shoved the chair away and was pushing Steve up against the wall behind his desk, clutching his arms, burying his face in Steve's neck. Steve squeezed his eyes shut, unfurling his legs to wrap around Bucky's back, sliding his arms around Bucky's shoulders.

Bucky's face was damp when he lifted his head; Steve felt it rather than saw it because Bucky immediately kissed him, moving his hands to hold Steve's jaw with one, and the back of his head with the other. Steve pushed himself away from the wall, closer to Bucky; Bucky responded in kind and moreso, pulling Steve completely off the desk, catching him before he could sink to the floor, stumbling but never in danger of dropping Steve as he somehow found their way to the bed.

Steve tried to start unbuttoning Bucky's shirt as soon as he felt his mattress underneath him, and tried again the first time Bucky pushed his hands away; he stopped when Bucky made a frustrated noise, followed by "God, Steve, would you let me do one thing, _one thing_ , so you don't have to?" Steve planted his hands on the bed, clutching at the sheets to force them into inaction. Bucky knew he would hate every second of that and obligingly made short work of undoing his jacket and the shirt underneath it, before pushing Steve's suspenders off his shoulders (an easy task as even on their tightest setting, they were meant for someone taller), divesting him of his shirt, and pressuring him to lie down. Steve _had_ to assist at that point; pushing himself up to let Bucky get his pants and underwear off, but he fell back into uselessness when Bucky stood up to finish undressing himself. Thankfully that was over quickly too, but before Steve could reach up for him, to test if he was allowed to move now, Bucky leaned over him, put his hands on Steve's shoulder and hip respectively, and rolled him over onto his side, facing away from Bucky.

Bucky moved with a certain elegance that Steve would have loved to animate, if he would have allowed the Barnes to send him out to California and the studios there. It came from never having been poor, never having to fight for food or shelter or respect, never losing confidence that security would always be within reach. The outer shell of that grace was still there; Steve felt it as Bucky sat on the mattress and stretched out behind him like a cat, but there was an uncharacteristic clumsiness now, too; Bucky's hands trembled when he tugged Steve's leg up and back to rest atop his own, and when he reached over without looking he put his hand closer to Steve's mid-thigh than to his pelvis.

"Wow, Buck, I know it's gotten longer, but not by _that_ much," Steve said, trying to laugh through his words. "I appreciate that, though."

Bucky didn't respond except to move his hand to the correct place, and to press closer to Steve when his breath hitched. He sighed, deeply; Steve felt the shudder against his back and pressed himself into it, grinding into Bucky slightly to reciprocate, and to encourage. Bucky took the hint, and buried his face in the back of Steve's neck for good measure, pressing kisses in a haphazard line between Steve's shoulder blades. He managed to worm his other arm under and around Steve, clutching him tight across his chest and shoulders, giving him something to struggle against when he began to squirm. They couldn't go fast; the first time they tried a quickie the excitement and exertion had wound up giving Steve a panic attack; so they'd relegated their sex life to late nights and weekends when the family was away and they could take their time, and they'd found smaller ways to add some of Steve's much-craved adrenaline (Bucky had laughed that Steve didn't know how to _not_ fight, even with this).

"You're gonna push me off the bed, Steve; calm down," Bucky muttered once Steve began writhing in earnest, counter-intuitively not letting up regardless.

"If you'd let go of me it'd be easier on you," Steve tossed back through gritted teeth.

"Well that's just not going to happen," Bucky said, making it almost to the end of his sentence before his voice cracked.

Steve realized, like a punch to the gut, that he wasn't being teased.

Mustering up his comparably little strength he managed to clumsily flip himself over without breaking free, take hold of Bucky's face, and pull him into another kiss. Bucky wrapped his now free arm around Steve and clung to him, returning Steve's kisses, and even though he hadn't initiated them he immediately took charge of them, drawing them out, letting Steve come up for air when he needed to and coming back at a pace that would have seemed lazy if it wasn't also so desperate.

It was Steve who changed direction again; he pulled back to give his lungs some relief and stretched up, to kiss Bucky's forehead, and then slid down, to his eyelid, the corner of his mouth, the side of his neck. Steve curled to reach more--shoulder, collarbone, chest--and Bucky used the leverage to wriggle underneath Steve and turn them over, so Steve straddled him. He grabbed Steve's arms to steady him, and laughed when Steve didn't miss a beat, continuing to rain kisses up and down his body with abandon. He gripped Steve's elbow once he had found his balance, so he could keep it once Bucky moved his other hand back to between Steve's legs.

"You okay there?" he asked, when the touch arrested Steve's movement and he slumped, his breath heavy.

"I could do this all night," Steve panted back determinedly.

"Good to hear," Bucky said, curling and straightening and curling his fingertips against Steve's shaft; giving a watery grin as he watched Steve sway back and forth under the touch, biting his bottom lip. "That was the plan."

"All night? Really?"

"Well I figure we'll take breaks."

"You're gonna be exhausted in the morning."

Bucky reached up, wrapped his free hand around the back of Steve's neck, and pulled him down to plant another kiss on his mouth. "I can sleep on the boat."

Steve was impatient after about 15 seconds but forced himself to stay put, to let Bucky lead and to respond accordingly. His back hurt from hunching over after two minutes or so; a perfect excuse as any to stretch out on his elbows and knees over Bucky, leaving space so as to not trap Bucky's hand between them. The hand around his neck ran up and down his spine, gently tracing the small hills and valleys of each individual vertebrae, and then descended to massage the spot on Steve's back that had begun aching; and it grabbed Steve's bottom when Steve leaned forward, shoving his hand between the mattress and the headboard into the rip in the lining where he had hidden a bottle of lubricant.

"Hey, eager beaver," Bucky said, craning his neck up to suck a kiss onto Steve's shoulder. "Not yet."

"C'mon, I gotta do something for you, too," Steve said, finding the bottle and leaning back on his haunches once it was in hand.

"Makes you think you're not doing something for me already?"

"Something _more_."

Bucky blinked. He inhaled deeply, exhaled heavily, and then ran his hands down Steve's arms, half-smiling. "Wouldn't be you otherwise."

Steve's kiss was grateful, compromisingly languid. "Doesn't have to go quick. We can do this slow. Promise."

"Oh, I'll be making sure of that. C'mere." He pulled on Steve, forcing him to crawl up the mattress, and arranged him so he knelt over Bucky's face. "Here." Steve had dropped the bottle, and Bucky now handed it back to him, before offering two fingers. "You do the honors, since you're so rarin' to go."

Steve obligingly squeezed a generous amount onto Bucky's fingers. With his dry hand Bucky took the bottle from Steve and laid it aside, and then took Steve's wrists, weaving his fingers around them so he managed a tight if precarious hold.

It was all Steve could do to keep from crying out when Bucky took him in his mouth and began to prep him all at once; he ground his teeth down into his bottom lip, allowing only a high, shuddering whine out. Bucky grinned up at him and tugged on his wrists, urging him to stay in position; he pulled his knees up to be a makeshift back rest when he felt Steve's legs begin to tremble in earnest under the pressure of holding himself up.

"You sure you're okay?"

"I hate you."

"Aw, I thought you loved me." Bucky stared up at him with wide, innocent eyes, placed a kiss on the tip, and breached him with his pointer finger.

"Yeah, that too," Steve managed to choke out with some clarity.

"Good. 'Cause I love you, too." Bucky inhaled, and held his breath; after a moment he let go of Steve's wrists and wrapped his now free arm around Steve's back, holding him as tight as possible without moving him out of position. "I love you, too."

"Buck--"

Bucky silenced him with another well-aimed flick of the tongue. "Don't do anything stupid if you do make it out there, all right?"

"Can't; you're taking all the stupid with you," Steve mumbled, somewhat recovering.

"I mean it, Steve," Bucky said, slipping his middle finger in beside its mate, steadying Steve with his other hand when he felt him sway. "I know you. You're gonna throw your dumb self at every noble cause and rescue mission that comes your way. And I don't want you to think..." His grip around Steve's back turned vicelike; his face hardened into the fiercest glare he could muster for all his eyes stayed soft and wet. "I don't care if you're not supposed to make it to 40. Your life is worth as much as anyone else's. Hell, it's probably worth _more_. And you're not gonna throw it away for no reason. I won't let you."

Steve angled himself back so he could see Bucky's face; his now free fingers ran over the purple under Bucky's eyes, the lines cutting across his forehead, as if his touch could erase them rather than--he knew with a nauseating certainty--cause them.

"Steve..."

"I won't," Steve said in a rush, pressing his hands against Bucky's face. "I promise I won't die for nothing, Buck. I won't die at all; I can't, you said it yourself. "End of the line." I can't die unless you go with me." Bucky made a noise that sounded like a laugh, like a sob. "And same for you; you can't die if I'm not..."

The thought caught in his throat, along with his breath, and for a moment he was terrified that he would be attacked with panic, or asthma, or both.

"We're not real good at the whole dirty talk thing, are we?"

The invisible hold on Steve's throat broke, and he barked out a laugh. "You wanna stop?"

"Hell no. Was just gonna ask if you thought you were ready."

Steve was suddenly acutely aware of Bucky's fingers inside him; he hadn't forgotten them by any means, but now their presence was unignorable.

"Think I'm good." Bucky raised an eyebrow. "All right, trust me a _little_ , Buck? I don't particularly want this to hurt. You're where I go to _not_ hurt."

"...Shit." Bucky drew his arm from around Steve's back to sling it across his eyes; the laughter in his voice was embarrassed and pleased and sad. "Shit, _Steve_..."

Steve pushed himself back, to hover over Bucky's hips rather than his face, and reached for the laid-aside bottle of lubricant; when Bucky didn't move to take control of the situation Steve wet his hand and began applying the gel to Bucky accordingly.

"I am _very_ glad we are not wasting the evening being mad at each other," Bucky said through a pleasured groan, peeking out from under his arm to watch Steve.

"Same." Steve lifted up on his knees a little, signalling Bucky to gently drag his fingers out of him, and shifted into a better position. Bucky assisted, putting one hand on Steve's hip and the other on himself, and guided them into union.

Steve blushed a little as it happened; the soft, gorgeous quiet noises Bucky was making affected him just by themselves, and also reminded him of the potentially much louder sounds that would be coming out of his own mouth soon. Bucky caught the flush on Steve's face through his own half-lidded eyes, and grinned up at him in recognition of Steve's thoughts. He tugged Steve's upper half down a bit with one hand, and slid his three middle fingers into Steve's mouth; with his other hand he wrapped his fingers around Steve's erection.

Steve did his damnedest not to bite down on Bucky's hand too hard.

"I know it's hard for you but you gotta stay quiet, Steve," Bucky said, pressing his thumb into where Steve's lips met the side of his cheek, sealing Steve's mouth completely.

Steve put a little less effort into keeping his teeth off of Bucky's hand. Bucky winced, but doggedly hung onto his teasing smile as he planted his feet for leverage and shifted underneath Steve, biting his own lip to muzzle himself. Steve ground down against him, and gave a smugly pleased smile when he pulled a loud moan out of Bucky's mouth.

"You keep that up you're gonna get us caught, ya punk," Bucky muttered, clenching his teeth as if he could retract the previous noise by being extra quiet this time around.

Steve tried to say _"Hey, you're the one that got loud"_ with his eyes as he reached over for the record player, turning the volume up just enough to provide extra security without drawing attention, if anyone else were still awake to hear it.

"I like this album," Bucky said, glancing over at the record player. "Glad I grabbed it."

Steve hummed in response, too busy rolling his tongue over and around Bucky's fingers to try to say something any more articulate. Bucky met that with a roll of his hips, both hands playing with Steve at the same time. The hum turned into a breathy whimper, and then another, higher, longer; Steve's body pitched forward and back almost of its own accord, because he was _trying_ not to rush like he promised, but God did Bucky make that difficult. Bucky pushed his hand further into Steve's mouth, stopping just before he could trigger the gag reflex; his other hand switched to feather-light touches from more heavy ones, which somehow made keeping control, and quiet, even harder.

Steve felt with some satisfaction that Bucky was having trouble keeping a slower pace, as well, and took that as an opening to pick up his own speed. Bucky's consequent glare was so much like a disgruntled cat's that he snorted, and twisted his face in imitation; Bucky maintained the expression for a few seconds before his resolve cracked, and Steve had to put a hand over Bucky's mouth to muffle his laughter.

"All right, you've been patient," Bucky said, once Steve let up, pulling his hand out of Steve's mouth. "Quicker we finish this, quicker we can start aga--"

"You give up too easy," Steve cut in, pressing his hand back over Bucky's mouth, and deliberately rocked himself as slow as he could stand, bearing down as he did so. "You keep givin' in to me," he said, with a strange tightness in his chest and throat that had nothing to do with his medical history. "You let me walk all over you."

"I'm whipped, what can I say," Bucky ground out, before his speech dissolved into far less coherent noises.

Steve hunched, leaning as far down as he could without dislodging himself; Bucky shifted underneath him, sitting up on his elbows before arranging himself so he leaned up against the pillows. The distance between their faces, thus shortened, was immediately fully closed when Steve pressed his lips against Bucky's; the hand Bucky had removed from Steve's mouth wrapped around the back of his head, pressed into his hair, and held them together.

Steve tried to pull back; Bucky's grip tightened, and he pulled his legs up further, trapping Steve that way as well. He gave it another handful of seconds before trying again, and this time he let himself soak in the tenseness of Bucky's fingers, the trembling effort in Bucky's arm to keep Steve where he was, and the rush of chills it sent through his entire body to have his play at freedom, however tongue-in-cheek, so resisted.

Bucky's movements were purposeful now, not overwhelmingly fast but quicker than the pace he had tried to maintain earlier. A compromise, and a hold that remained even when Steve writhed against it, both to test its strength and because he couldn't control how his body responded to Bucky's touch; never could. A hold that remained even after Steve arched in Bucky's grasp for the last time, and collapsed against him with an ecstatic moan and sweetly heavy pleasure flooding his entire body.

Bucky always found a way to give him what he wanted.

He tried to sit up immediately once the initial wave of pleasure receded, because Bucky wasn't finished; Bucky wasn't finished and he had to...but Bucky slid his now free other hand around Steve's back, clinching his side, and shook his head, and Steve fought the instinct to do anything other than wrap his arms around Bucky's neck and let Bucky bury his face in Steve's shoulder as he chased down his own release.

They stayed melted into each other for several minutes after he caught it.

__  
_Do I want to be with you_  
_As the years come and go?_  
_Only forever_  
_If you'd care to know_

 _Would I grant all your wishes_  
_And be proud of the task?_  
_Only forever_  
_If someone should ask ___

 _How long would it take me_  
_To be near if you beckoned?_  
_Offhand I would figure_  
_Less than a second_

 _Do you think I'll remember_  
_How you look when you smile?_  
_Only forever_  
_That's putting it mild_

"I _really_ like this album," Bucky murmured into Steve's shoulder.

"Think you gave it to me, actually." Steve shifted, to let himself comfortably press kisses into the side of Bucky's head without pushing Bucky's face away from his body.

"Probably. I do have very good taste."

Steve lightly head-butted Bucky's ear, before resting his mouth close to it; his lips brushed against the lobe of it as he followed along with the coda in broken hums and half-words.

 _How long would it take me_  
_To be near if you beckoned?_  
_Offhand I would figure_  
_Less than a second_

 _Do you think I'll remember_  
_How you look when you smile?_  
_Only forever_  
_That's putting it mild_

Violins played the song out sounding for all the world a tearful goodbye, and Steve momentarily lost himself, immobile, breathless, in that terrible ache, before he jerked upright like a muscle spasming.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I...let me up for a second?" Bucky obliged somewhat reluctantly, stretching his legs and loosening his hold on Steve, who carefully extricated himself from Bucky and slid off the bed. "I'll be right back."

"I'll be right here." Bucky smirked, to make up for the loss of contact. "Enjoying the view."

Steve hurried over to the desk, dropped under it, and rummaged through a wooden box he kept there, filled with treasures that he had grabbed in the seconds before his mother banished him from their apartment (everything he had left behind had been burned after her death, to keep infection from spreading). He found what he was looking for in seconds, and when he padded back to the bed Bucky was still in the process of making space for him to sit.

"I want you to take this with you," Steve said, pressing the object of his search into Bucky's palm as he took a seat on the bed; Bucky felt the beadwork before he opened his hands to see that it was a small rectangle attached to a looped string, a wall hanging that could double as a bookmark.

"Did Aksot make this?"

Steve nodded. "Yeah. She made it for my dad when he was a child. He took it with him when he went overseas himself."

"Steve, I can't take this from you."

Steve's hand closed Bucky's fingers around the whimsy, and pushed it closer towards him. "That's why you're gonna give it back to me at the end of the war."

Bucky didn't respond to that; couldn't respond to that, except to open his hand again and look down at the gift. He ran his thumb over the whimsy, admiring the scores of expertly designed and threaded tiny yellow and blue beads, remembering the patience Minnie Rogers applied to her craft. Steve had been devoted to his grandmother, and since Bucky was equally devoted to Steve he had spent a lot of time in the venerable lady's company before her death. She'd told him stories about how she survived on selling little trinkets like these "to well-meaning white people like your folks", until she happened to hawk her product to Bill Rogers at a fundraiser to repair the Presbyterian church back in 18something and he was instantly smitten with her (Steve had inherited that attractive quality from her, Bucky thought). Thereafter her trade helped support herself, him, and her only child to survive infancy; later it provided a very meager supplement to her daughter-in-law and grandson's incomes (and indeed, George and Winifred had bought several of her pieces).

He thought that maybe this was the only one of Aksot's works that she, and Steve, hadn't meant, or wanted to see, go far afield.

"What's this say?" he asked through the knot in his throat, tapping his finger over the blue beads once he figured out that they represented writing and not just decoration.

"It's, um..." Steve pressed his finger against the whimsy, pointing at each syllable as he spoke them. " _Tsi' nyu-we ohkunoluhkwake_." He stumbled a bit over the pronunciation; his grandmother had told him to keep their language a secret between them ("That way no one can take it from you") and though he had taught some Oneida phrases to Bucky years ago, since her death he had honored her wishes and not spoken it to anyone. Bucky hadn't asked him to until now. "It's...it's lyrics from a lullaby she used to sing me. And my dad, when he was a baby."

"What's it mean?"

" _I will love you forever_."

Bucky choked on his breath. Without realizing it he closed his fingers in a fist around the whimsy, and pressed it to his chest, over his heart.

"Just...just tell people you got it off an old Indian lady and you don't know what it means," Steve said, thickly, brushing a hand through Bucky's hair. "Ancient good luck charm or whatever. You got it because it looked nifty."

"Nah." Bucky shook his head. "I think...I think that I got an Indian sweetheart back home, instead. Name of...hell, I'll tell 'em it's Stephanie. Stephanie Grace. And she's a huge sap. Gave me a family heirloom to carry with me." His hand took Steve's jaw; he pressed his lips to Steve's forehead. "And when I get back home we're gonna run away together. Marry ourselves to ourselves since no clergy's gonna take us. Travel the whole country looking for rights to wrong and noble shit like that. Whatever she wants. We'll do it."

Steve exhaled shakily, letting himself lean against Bucky, to be supported by his height and weight and presence. "Stephanie's worth all that, you think?"

"Why wouldn't she be?" Bucky asked, his lips against Steve's forehead still.

"She's...she's stubborn," Steve said, feeling his heart drop ever closer to his stomach. "She doesn't know her place. Doesn't listen. Makes you..." His throat dried up; he swallowed, and only partially succeeded in moistening it. "Makes you worry something fierce."

Bucky sighed slowly, deeply, dropping his head down so he rested his forehead against Steve's, his eyes shut. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess my sweetheart's kind of a pain in the neck. But you know what, I wouldn't want 'em to change."

"No foolin'?" Steve's smile was sardonic; hopeful.

"No foolin'," Bucky confirmed, sliding his free hand around Steve's shoulders; Steve adjusted to let him do so comfortably. "You don't change perfect. You just...hope you can make life go a little easier for 'em, that's all," he finished, quieter.

Steve had found himself snuggling into Bucky's side, and then suddenly clinging to him, burying his face against his chest, clutching at his arms.

"You have. You _do_. Don't think you don't, that I don't want...I just...I _have_ to do this, Buck. I couldn't forgive myself if I didn't go. If I didn't try."

"I know." Bucky reached up, to card a hand through Steve's hair and down the side of his face, to press Steve's head closer to his chest. "Me too."

Warmth pooled through Steve, starting in his chest and stomach and spreading out to the rest of his body. He moved to hold Bucky tighter, more securely, and Bucky responded in kind, running a hand gently down the length of Steve's body that he could reach.

"Did you want another go-around?" Steve asked, after he had watched Bucky stroke him like that from the corner of his eye for several seconds.

"Nn...in a bit," Bucky said, letting his hand rest on Steve's arm, his head drop onto Steve's own. "For now let's just..."

Bucky trailed off. Steve shut his eyes and inhaled deeply, breathing in the only peace that he had ever known; that he had ever allowed himself not just to have, but to enjoy. To treasure.

"All right."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll be touching more on the letter from Kovno, as well as Steve's diverse religious background, next chapter, if anyone is feeling confused over it. 
> 
> ["Only Forever"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNCt6hkCUic) is basically the ultimate Stucky song, and since it was released in 1940 they'd be familiar with it. I should mention that this song is kinda my jam and we'll be seeing more of it later on.
> 
> ["Aksot"](https://books.google.com/books?id=jVdI9AUa6CsC&pg=PA406&lpg=PA406&dq=oneida+kinship+word+for+grandmother&source=bl&ots=ENHhfF8hfp&sig=7X2gAZdMWohZUsXdVVC6KR_RtmI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDAQ6AEwA2oVChMIzKCGrvv2yAIVxTUmCh1gIQPW#v=onepage&q=oneida%20kinship%20word%20for%20grandmother&f=false) is the Oneida title for "grandmother" and is used for when you are actually addressing her, as opposed to, for instance, saying "Aksota", which would translate to "my grandmother" and be used when you are speaking about her to someone else. Bucky referred to Steve's grandmother as his own because of course he did. [Selling beadwork](http://www.oneidaindiannation.com/culture/53831352.html) is indeed how many Oneida women supported themselves and their families in the face of poverty.
> 
> [Here](http://www.oneidanation.org/uploadedFiles/Departments/Language/Sub_Pages/Language_Lessons/News/always%20love%20you%20kana.mp3) is the lullaby Steve's grandmother would sing, and [here](http://www.oneidanation.org/uploadedFiles/Departments/Language/Sub_Pages/Language_Lessons/News/i%20will%20love%20you%20forever.pdf) is a translation thereof. This lullaby will be popping up later on, too.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, Steve and Bucky took over, so expect more follow-up from last chapter, next chapter.

Were it not for Steve's ever faithful 5am alarm clock, he and Bucky would probably have been caught in bed together the next morning, still naked, still clinging. As it was Bucky grabbed his uniform--folded neatly at some point during the night--and beat it out of Steve's room for the second floor shower just moments before Winifred descended the stairs. Steve pretended to still be asleep when she poked her head in the door, waited for what felt like a safe amount of time after he heard her footsteps disappear down to the first floor, and finally crawled out of bed to take his time getting dressed.

"Didn't sleep well?" Winifred asked, once he padded downstairs and into the kitchen to find her at the stove. Winifred Buchanan had stepped off the boat from Scotland as a cook, and no matter how long it had been since she caught the eye of her employer's son and moved up in the world, the kitchen remained something of an oasis to her.

"Just not very much," Steve mumbled, rubbing the heel of his palm against his eyes. He and Bucky had only caught small snatches of sleep throughout the night; it must have shown, although once Steve got a good look at Winifred's face he wondered how she could believe anyone could ever be the same amount of tired as she looked.

George wandered into the kitchen mumbling "G'morning" to Steve, his eyes less red-rimmed but his face more drawn than his wife's. Winifred leaned against him when he wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed the side of her head.

Steve's stomach clenched at the easy display of affection. Bucky had learned it from somewhere.

That must have shown on his face as well, because when Rebecca slipped into the kitchen she asked him if he felt sick. She didn't seem to believe him when he shook his head, but George gestured to her before she could inquire further, and she drifted over to her parents silently, letting herself be enfolded into their arms.

"Steve?"

He hadn't realized that he'd been staring at the floor until the sound of his name brought his gaze back up.

"Come here, sweetheart," Winifred continued.

He hesitated, bunching the hem of his shirt into his hands, and took a tentative step forward only when she kept waving him near to them. Once he had taken the first step, though, it was as though invisible hands pushed him to take the rest, and in seconds he found himself under Winifred's arm with George's hand on his shoulder, his chin resting atop Rebecca's head.

He hadn't been held like this since his mother died, since Bucky had persuaded him to come back to the mansion before trying to put the apartment to rights, and they had been enveloped almost as soon as they had walked in the door. With Bucky missing from this embrace, it felt as though it was _his_ funeral they had just returned from.

They broke apart when they heard footsteps approaching the kitchen, and "Guys?" float in through the doorway. The breath Steve had been holding abandoned him in irrational but nonetheless deep relief.

Not today. Not yet.

Breakfast was quiet. Bucky had to a specific train to catch and the knowledge of a deadline put the kibosh on any conversation that might extend past it, if anyone would have had any idea what to say. When they spoke it was to ask each other to pass the pitcher of milk, or the sugar ("Sugar, are you rationed?" Bucky asked, when the bowl thereof was sitting right in front of Steve; Winifred missed Steve's weak, affirmative smile when she immediately said "You can have as much as you want, James, don't worry about it").

The car ride over was equally if not more so noiseless. George drove with Winifred's hand covering his on the gearshift, the pair of them equally white-knuckled. About halfway there Rebecca slipped her arm around Bucky's and rested her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes and inhaling brokenly. Bucky reached over to take her other arm, hugging her as best he could from the side. On the floor, out of sight, his foot was hooked around Steve's.

Traffic was, predictably, backed up, the streets being crammed with other families saying goodbye to other sons and brothers and lovers, so George parked at the earliest opportunity, and they made the rest of their way to the train station on foot. The flurry of activity around them seemed to inject a little life into the group, as Winifred suddenly began talking.

"Check to see if you have mail whenever you can, James, because I'll be sending you a lot of packages. The food won't be any good over there."

"Okay, Mom."

"And don't you be giving all your everything away, okay? I'll send enough for if you make friends but it's for you first, anyone else second."

"Okay, Mom."

Bucky _would_ do that, Steve thought. Bucky had been giving his everything away since that day in November of '29 when Steve knocked on the Barnes' door with his wagon full of cleaning supplies that he was decidedly allergic to, offering to scrub their whole house top to bottom for five dollars, and three hours later Winifred found them playing Pegity in the drawing room with Bucky's entire allowance for that week in Steve's pocket.

"Keep your feet dry and clean, as much as you can," George piped up. "You won't have a lot of opportunities to do so, so when you can, do it. Once your feet go, that's it."

"That's it, George?" Winifred said, her voice straddling the line between playful and incredulous. "That's all you've got to prepare him for the front?"

"Nothing can prepare you for the front."

"'Preciate your honesty, Dad," Bucky said, a little garbled. Without looking George reached out and slung an arm around his son, pulling him into his side and keeping him there as they walked.

"I know you probably won't," Rebecca said after her parents fell quiet, having not relinquished her hold on Bucky's arm except for a brief moment that let them get out of the car, "but if you find out something about Bruce..."

"I'll write immediately. Drop everything I'm doing right then and there, promise."

"Don't do that," Winifred said, almost snappishly. "You need to be paying attention to what you're doing."

"Okay, Mom."

"James Buchanan Barnes if you say "okay Mom" to me again I will give you a spanking you right here in the street in front of God and everyone."

Bucky opened his mouth, and Steve expected Bucky to do it, it wouldn't be the first time he had trolled his mother into disciplining him just for the fun of it, but instead of "Okay, Mom" the words that came out were "We're here." And indeed, two blocks ahead of them was the tail end of a huge crowd that had amassed around the train station.

"We've still got some time," Winifred said quietly.

Bucky shook his head. "I shouldn't risk missing the train."

"At least let us get you a bagel. You barely ate at breakfast."

"I'm not really hungry."

"Bucky," Rebecca whispered, squeezing her brother's arm.

"...All right. Guess I'll take a bagel. And a leak, since apparently we've got the time."

"James, don't be vulgar," George chastised automatically.

They backtracked about half a block to a tiny breakfast shop whose owner Steve vaguely knew through his mother's network of friends ("It's called Jewish geography," Steve told Bucky once, when they had been walking through the Lower East Side and complete strangers greeted not only Steve by name, but Bucky as well; "Ma talks about you a lot," was Steve's explanation for the latter phenomenon). The connection allowed Bucky access to the upstairs apartment to use the bathroom, and Steve trailed after him about two minutes later, claiming the need for it as well.

"Buck, d'you fall in or something?" Steve called, after another two minutes of staring at the bathroom door. "Buck?" he called again, when he was answered with silence; he pressed his ear against the door, and when he heard something ragged and uneven he gripped the doorknob, pulling and twisting it as if he had a hope of forcing it open. "Bucky, let me come in."

He heard Bucky inelegantly struggle with the lock on the door for several seconds; once it fell quiet again Steve turned the knob and nearly tripped into the room when the door opened more quickly than he had been prepared for. Bucky stood at the running sink, hands gripping the ceramic in a failed attempt to quell the shaking in his arms; his head was down, his breath coming out in a way that made Steve grateful he couldn't see his own panic attacks, if they scared Bucky half so much as this display scared Steve.

"Breathe," Steve whispered before he even realized it; one hand settled on Bucky's back, between his shoulder blades; the other pulled the door shut and came to rest on Bucky's wrist. His own heart was pounding in his ears; his advice was as much for himself as it was for Bucky. "Here, stand up, stand up straight. Breathe with me." He inhaled exaggeratedly, definitely not as smoothly as he wanted, but Bucky drew in a breath with him; it broke midway, but found its way back. "Breathe out; exhale. Do it with me."

Bucky's balance faltered a bit as he followed directions and he grabbed Steve's wrist to steady himself. Steve pressed himself up against Bucky's side, to prop him up, and to let him feel Steve's abdomen rise and fall.

"Count of eight in," Steve said, as firm as he remembered his mother being when she guided him out of his own respiratory distress. "Breathe from your diaphragm." He wrapped his free arm around Bucky's back, settling his hand just below Bucky's rib cage. "One...two..." He almost ran out of breath himself, as he counted through his inhalation, but Bucky didn't seem to notice. "Eight out, Buck. Eight out. One...two..."

Bucky followed him through forty-eight more counts of breathing in and out, until the shuddering breath had given way to only shivering. The hand on Steve's wrist went up to squeeze his arm, and then lightly pushed him away; Bucky ducked as he cupped his hands under the still-running faucet, and then splashed the gathered water on his face.

"Thanks." Bucky wiped his face with the back of his hand, and then with the towel next to the sink. "Sorry."

"Hey, you've talked me through enough attacks yourself," Steve said with a crooked smile. "Glad I could return the favor."

Bucky shook his head. "Not the same."

"How do you figure that?"

A shrug. "It's nothing. Never mind."

" _No_ ," Steve drawled, straightening up as tall as he could make himself. "How do you figure that?"

He knew he didn't cut a particularly authoritative figure, but Bucky shifted under his stare and answered anyway.

"Yours are 'cause your internal plumbing doesn't work."

"Okay, and...?"

"And _this_ was 'cause I'm actually a chickenshit."

"What?" Steve's brow furrowed. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean that you're not afraid of dying," Bucky said in a low, sick-sounding voice, turning his head to avoid Steve's gaze. "And that I wish I was a little more like you right about now."

"Boys?" Winifred's voice cut in from the foot of the stairs. "Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine, Mom, we'll be down in a second!" Bucky called back, deliberately ignoring the stunned look on Steve's face.

"Bucky, wait," Steve said, grabbing Bucky's arm as he made for the door. He hadn't much strength, but Bucky had even less resistance, and he was able to turn Bucky around and take both his arms with surprising ease. "Hold on a minute, you can't just...Bucky, _look at me_."

Bucky flicked his eyes in Steve's direction, his head still turned away. Steve shook him lightly; Bucky did turn his head, but his gaze turned downward simultaneously. Better than nothing.

"Bucky, who _cares_ if you're afraid? Everyone's afraid. Every person getting on that train is probably shitting their pants. It doesn't _matter_. You're still going, aren't you? Aren't you?" Bucky nodded mutely under the interrogation. "And you _decided_ to go. No one made you. You chose it. You know it's the right thing to do, so you're doing it. You're not chickenshit, Bucky. Hell, you're probably braver'n I am."

"No one is braver than you." It was almost a statement of fact more than an argument.

"Can I at least say you come in a very close second?" Steve said, with a broken smile and an even more broken laugh, neither of which Bucky reciprocated. He reached up, putting his hands on Bucky's face, and pulled him down, breathing him into a kiss. "You are the best person I've ever known, Buck. You are so..." _selfless_ and _kind_ and _good_ and _oh God why did you enlist; Bucky they're going to eat you alive_ "...you are a _blessing_." That was the highest praise his mother could ever heap on someone, and never had it felt more appropriate to imitate her than right here, right now. "And scared or not, the army is lucky to have you. Don't ever forget that."

Bucky dropped his head, lightly butting and then resting his forehead against Steve's, and exhaled heavily, shakily. "Write that down for me, Steve. Gonna need that reminder once all the shooting and running and screaming starts."

"Every single letter. In case you lose some of them."

"God." Bucky tipped his head back, lightly smacking the back of his skull against the wall. "How'm I supposed to last three seconds without you, huh?"

"Oh, I'll be over there soon, don't you worry," Steve said, with a faltering but bright grin. "Leadin' the pack, even."

Bucky finally laughed, and dropped a kiss on Steve's mouth before putting a little distance between them. "Welp, if you manage that, you got my word that I'll follow you anywhere."

"For now maybe just follow me downstairs? Before your mom sends a search party."

Indeed, they made it back downstairs just seconds before Winifred could call up to them again. Bucky waved off questions of what had kept them with the excuse of a chat that went on too long, and choked down the bagel his mother shoved in his hands (if she noticed that they were still shaking, she made no direct indication).

By the time they finished eating any further conversation had been drowned out by the crowd, which had grown exponentially louder and bigger in the past half hour. George muttered that it was probably time to get Bucky on the train, and after futilely glancing at every time-telling device in the room to see if one of them could magically grant them a few more minutes, Bucky murmured his agreement. They paid, with the owner wishing good bye and good luck to Bucky in particular, somehow opened the door without hitting anyone on the street, and pushed their way into the throng. They made it about halfway through the crowd before the wall of bodies made squishing five people through to the platform impossible, and Bucky assessed their chances for a moment before herding his family back to where it was slightly less packed.

"Think this is where we're gonna have to say goodbye."

"All right, honey," Winifred said, reluctantly. "We'll stay until the train leaves."

"Thanks." The corner of his mouth quirked a weak, grateful smile, before he pulled his mother into a tight hug.

"Oh my baby boy," Winifred crooned as she swayed him, as if he were still the infant she rocked to sleep. "You've got to promise me that you'll be careful out there, okay?"

"I will."

"Keep your wits about you," George added, putting a hand on Bucky's shoulder. "It's all luck out there, but hedge your bets as much as you can."

"All right."

"Avoid the clap," Rebecca giggled tearily.

"Rebecca Pearl!" Winifred squawked, letting go of her firstborn to gape at her youngest.

"What? We're all giving him advice."

"C'mere you little brat," Bucky muttered, grabbing his sister and yanking her into a bear hug. "Thanks for your concern, but I don't plan on picking up any women over there."

Rebecca considered making a smart remark, but thought better of it, instead choosing to wrap her arm around Bucky's stomach and squeeze him. He affectionately tugged on her braids, before patting her on the head, and then dunking her under his arm once she let up her hold.

To Steve's right a man and woman were caught up in a desperate kiss. Bucky surreptitiously gestured with his chin for Steve to look at them, to get the feeling vicariously as Bucky stepped forward and pulled him into hug.

"Don't win the war before I get there, okay?" Steve said, tipping his head back to try and ease the lump in his throat.

"Sir, yes sir," Bucky mumbled through his own painfully closed throat, forcing himself to release Steve immediately lest he never let go at all. He took a few steps back, surveying his family clumped together by the crush of the crowd and their own need to be supported by one another, and somehow forced a huge, bright grin onto his face. "See you all on the other side, I guess."

"You better," Steve and Rebecca said at the same time.

Bucky almost laughed, but the blaring of the train's horn cut him off, and the crowd shifted; one person, and then another and another before he could right himself, cut off Bucky's view of his family.

"Watch the train!" Bucky called over at least four people's heads, before he was lost in the surge.

"Here, this way, there's a platform..." Steve was nearly jerked off his feet when Rebecca grabbed his arm and yanked him along after her as she ran around the back of the crowd, her parents trailing them from several feet behind. "I used it when Bruce left!" she called by way of elaboration, as she pulled Steve around a building and through a short alleyway parallel to the train tracks (Bruce's train had left in the middle of a Wednesday night; despite the Barnes having hosted a proper good-bye dinner party for him, they pretended not to notice when Rebecca sneaked out to see him off).

The train blared its horn again when Rebecca finally led them to the "platform", a stack of abandoned lumber, crates, and garbage in some semblance of a hill with a flat plateau. Steve pushed her up when she nearly slid down the pile; she found her footing and reached down, to yank him up beside her just in time for the train to begin pulling out of the station. George helped his wife up, precariously balancing her atop an old bucket, and she stretched her arm up to frantically wave at the train as it began passing by.

The apple didn't fall far from the tree; with a little squinting they could see Bucky leaning dangerously out from a window, trying to find them in the crowd.

Steve yelled out Bucky's name before he could think that it would be more seemly, less suspicious, to let Rebecca call for him first, but if Bucky's family thought anything of it they were too busy matching and then surpassing him in volume to express it.

Maybe it was their noise, or maybe it was some passing merciful angel; either way Bucky saw them before his car could pass them by, and he returned his mother's wave, equally graceless and frantic, before planting his hands on the rolled-down window, leaning out as far as he could, and yelling out something that, after it made it past the squeal of the train's tires and the dull roar of the crowd, still sounded like "I love you!"

To Steve's right Winifred finally burst into the tears she'd been holding back since the night before; George's hand moved from the small of her back to her wrist, holding himself up as much as he was comforting her. To Steve's left Rebecca covered her mouth with her hand to catch the breath that had violently tried to escape her.

When his heart and lungs contracted inside his chest Steve thought it was a sudden-onset asthma attack. When the train disappeared and he hadn't doubled over in wheezes and gasps, but the pain not only stayed but spread to his entire body, he almost wished that it was.

*

"Steve?"

"Yeah?"

"Phone for you."

The trek home had been unsurprisingly awful. Winifred hadn't stopped crying, and George himself had needed to wipe his eyes a few times. Steve walked, sat, and walked again as if in a trance, Rebecca clinging to his arm the way she had clung to Bucky less than an hour before. She only let go of him once they made it to the house and Steve was shooed inside by her father; the Barnes had decided last night to go to the special church service being held for the families of the soldiers being deployed and figured that Steve wouldn't want to join. Steve started to protest--Aksot had taken him to church as a kid, with Ma's permission even--but stopped when George said "Actually we thought you'd want to be alone."

Bucky wasn't the only member of the Barnes family to know him well.

The maids came in about fifteen minutes after they left, and now an hour later one of them was standing in his doorway, watching Steve process the information from his bed before bolting upright.

"Did they say who they were?"

"Um...a Miss Carter, I believe she said?"

Steve gracelessly fell off his mattress; he saw the maid pressing her lips together to avoid laughing as he clumsily righted himself and ran past her, belatedly calling out "Thank you!" as he raced for the second-floor library. The receiver was sitting a few inches away from the cradle on the desk, and Steve nearly dropped it after snatching it up and practically throwing it onto the side of his face.

"Hello?" He winced; that voice sounded like something out of 1936, before he started on testosterone. "Hello?" he tried again, after clearing his throat.

"Steve? Steve Rogers?"

"This is he. Is this Miss Carter?" If she hadn't given the maid her actual title there are probably a reason for it.

"Yes, in fact." She sounded pleased; he prayed to God it was with his deductive skills. "I hope this isn't a bad time?"

"Not at all, I'm...he already left. Bucky did."

"Yes, I saw the crowds around the train station. I didn't actually want to call you today, I assumed you and the family would be--occupied--but I'm afraid this is very urgent."

"I understand. Absolutely. And no, you're not interrupting anything, it's just me here. Me and the staff, of course."

"I see. Is this a shared line?"

"No, we, we have our own."

"Excellent. Would you be opposed to coming back to the enlistment center from yesterday?"

"No. I wouldn't be opposed, I mean." His blood pressure might be opposed, if his suddenly racing pulse was any indication, but much to Bucky's and everyone's chagrin that had never stopped him before. "When?"

"Immediately."

"Not a problem."

"Very good. Go right inside when you arrive; either I or another agent will be waiting for you at the front desk. Bring identification, and your card from yesterday."

"Got it."

"All right then. I expect you within the hour. Don't tell anyone where you're going."

"Make it a half hour."

"I'll hold you to that."

He tossed the receiver back into the cradle as soon as he heard Peggy hang up and flung the door to the library open, racing back to his room to shove his feet back into his shoes. The maid who had brought him the message raised her eyebrows at him from where she had begun sweeping the hallway floor outside of his bedroom.

"If they come back before I do, tell them..." They probably wouldn't believe that he had a date. "Tell them a friend called. They needed me. I'll be gone for maybe a couple hours, I don't know."

"Sure thing."

He flashed her a grateful smile, as well as a verbal "thank you", before he disappeared around the corner to the stairs. A half hour was cutting it close, but Peggy obviously needed him, and Bucky needed him too, and the sooner he got to both of them, the better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured that since "Buchanan" is pretty unusual for a middle name, it could be Bucky's mother's maiden name (I've seen boys be given their mom's maiden name for their middle name before). "Buchanan" being Scottish in origin, I made Winifred Scottish-born.
> 
> "Are you rationed?" was 1940s slang for "Are you dating someone?"
> 
> Imagine Wee!Stucky [playing a board game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegity) and melt. Also it was common for poor children during the Depression to earn money doing janitorial work for richer families. 
> 
> I went to an interfaith seminary, so we had lecturers from many different religious backgrounds, and the guest lecturer during our unit on Judaism introduced me the term "Jewish geography", which is a tongue-in-cheek reference to how unrelated Jewish people from separate neighborhoods know, or know about, each other through family and friends. 
> 
> It's kinda accepted fanon that Bucky was drafted rather than enlisted, and I've always felt uncomfortable with that assumption. Mainly because it always seems to be used as a way to cast Bucky in a negative light compared to Steve; the implications being that Bucky is a coward, and/or he doesn't care about what happens to the rest of the world the way Steve does. Pierce appeals to Bucky's sense of justice in TWS ("Your work has been a gift to mankind"; "If you don't do your job, I can't do mine, and Hydra can't give the world the freedom it deserves") and he wouldn't do that if Bucky didn't really care about that sort of thing. And given how Steve is frosty if not downright combative with people whose ethics he doesn't trust (witness: his interactions with Tony and Fury), I can't imagine him being so devoted to someone who didn't share his sense of morality. Hence, Bucky enlisted out of a genuine desire to do good. He's still allowed to be terrified, though.
> 
> "The clap" is gonorrhea, a common ailment among soldiers who picked up prostitutes. 
> 
> In the 1940s, to afford phones, some people shared lines with surrounding houses, meaning that any of their neighbors could pick up the phone and hear someone else's conversation.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Trigger warning for racism, and direct references to the Holocaust**
> 
> I should mention at this point that I'm protected by a thick, woolly, blubbery layer of WASP privilege, so if I write anything that's misguided, wrongheaded, inaccurate, or offensive, please let me know and I'll rectify it immediately.

Steve had never been to the enlistment center on a Monday morning, and it was somewhat unnerving how deserted it was; only a handful of potential recruits lingered by the doorway and inside the lobby. A passing nurse from the day before gave Steve a puzzled look as he ducked inside the door; he gave her a weak, awkward smile before turning his attention to the front desk.

Peggy wasn't there, but chatting pleasantly with the receptionist who had checked him in yesterday was a strawberry blonde woman in a uniform that gave her away as Peggy's colleague. 

"Excuse me? Ma'am?"

She finished laughing at whatever the receptionist had said quickly, turning in her chair to face Steve. "How can I help you, sir?"

"I'm, uh, Rogers? Steve Rogers? Peg--Agent Carter told me to meet her here. Or, _you_ , here, it turns out."

"Oh! Yes." From her reaction Steve figured that he wasn't what she had pictured. "Do you have any identification on you?" Steve produced his card, which she checked against his face; he pulled out his 4F for extra proof of his identity. She smiled, and stood when she handed his card back; he noticed, with a little glum resignation, that she stood at least a foot taller than him. "It's very nice to meet you, Mr. Rogers. I'm Agent Potts." He took her hand when she offered it. "Come with me?"

She stepped around the front desk, but instead of going into the lobby, led him to a doorway that had been marked "Do Not Enter" the previous day. It led out into an alleyway; Steve raised his eyebrows but trailed after Agent Potts quietly, and his faith was rewarded when she went to a doorway on the opposite building, pulled a ring of keys from her skirt pocket, selected one of what looked like dozens, and let them inside.

"All right, now before I take you any further," Agent Potts continued, going to a filing cabinet that sat behind a desk, "I do need you to sign this non-disclosure agreement..."

"Am I gonna hear something classified today?" Steve said, going to the desk to read the paper Agent Potts placed upon it.

"It's possible. We like to cover our bases." Steve took a moment to glance over the page before applying his signature, and handing it back to Agent Potts. "If you'll follow me..."

He did, through a doorway Agent Potts unlocked with another key; he noticed that the doorframe was made of some sort of metal. Agent Potts glanced at it, and then him, and smiled. "This way."

Agent Potts led him through a long hallway with several doors, each unlocked by a different key on Agent Potts's ring. The last door--he had lost count of how many preceded it--opened up into a room that was completely empty, save for an elevator on the far wall, and the operator thereof.

"'Morning, Pepper."

"'Morning, Nick," Agent Potts--Pepper--said, bringing herself and Steve to a stop a few feet away from Nick.

"Where you headed?"

"Second floor."

"Did you remember your boss's lunch order?"

"I have to go back for it."

He waited for a moment--Steve guessed for some additional coded message--and then bobbed his head and began to open the elevator doors when Pepper said nothing further.

"Is there a problem, Mr. Rogers?"

Steve blinked; he hadn't realized that he'd gotten so lost in thought that he'd begun staring, and worse yet, he'd been staring in the direction of Nick.

"No, no, not at all, I just..." Steve stammered, as Pepper and Nick stepped into the elevator.

"You just?" Pepper prompted; Nick closed the elevators doors once Steve crossed the threshold.

"I'm just...surprised," Steve said, cursing himself for leaving such an opening. " _Pleasantly_ , pleasantly surprised," he added hastily, feeling his face quickly going red, "because I thought...I thought the military was. Was. Ah...segre-segregated."

"The Strategic Science Reserve is paramilitary and as such we have our own hiring policies," Pepper said briskly. "I trust you'll be pleased to know that we are fully integrated."

"Yeah, that's why I'm workin' the elevator," Nick said, pulling a lever that sent the three of them sailing upwards.

"Theoretically integrated at all levels," Pepper amended.

"Better'n nothing?" Steve offered lamely.

Nick grunted, and brought the elevator to a stop. Steve muttered "thank you" after Nick pried open the door to let him and Pepper out; he noticed the regalia pinned to Nick's chest as he passed and grimaced.

"You're quite sure that you're pleasantly surprised?" Pepper asked, her lips drawn in tightly, once Nick had closed the doors behind them.

"I'm not, actually," Steve said, drawing himself up with the biggest breath he could take without triggering a coughing fit. "He's a decorated veteran."

"And?"

"And you've--not you, the SSR's got him _pulling levers_."

Pepper studied him for a moment, before her mouth relaxed, and her eyes eased out of the narrow glare they had taken on. "It is a shame, isn't it." Steve nodded, and Pepper heaved a sigh. "That's where we are right at the moment. But we _are_ moving forward. Both the agency, and our two selves right now. We're almost there, I promise."

Steve laughed obligingly. "Don't know whether to be relieved or worried that you've got so many lines of defense," he said, as she stepped off and he began trailing her once again.

"A healthy mix of both is probably best," Pepper said, letting them in through another door. "And, as I promised, here we are."

Whatever Steve had been expecting, it wasn't a relatively plain room with a desk and a few chairs scattered about. He blinked, taking a moment to adjust his expectations, before he finally noticed that Peggy was sitting at the desk, a phone pressed to her ear, looking annoyed.

"We've already bumped this project up by three months; we simply cannot and _will not_ cut another moment from it. You already want us to make a decision in less than one wee--... _that is in fact not enough time_ ; we are talking about--...no I do _not_ think you understand the gravity of the situation. If you did, you wouldn't--"

Steve winced a bit when he heard whomever Peggy was on the phone with hang up on her, and harder when Peggy slammed the phone into the cradle herself.

"That sounded productive," Pepper said dryly.

"Brandt is up to his usual nonsense," Peggy muttered darkly, whirling about in her chair. "Someone else can deal with him next time, Pepper. If I have to hear his voice again I will reach through the phone and strangle him with the chord."

"I'll take care of him, don't fret," Pepper said, something in her otherwise airy tone convincing Steve that she would have Brandt begging the SSR for an extension to the agenda when she was through with him. "In related news--"

"Yes, I see Steve, he can stop hanging about awkwardly behind you." Steve stepped out from where he had been partially hidden behind Pepper, hoping that Peggy hadn't thought he'd purposely concealed himself. "Steve, you made it within the half hour mark; very well done. Have a seat, please." He hastened to obey without looking too clumsily juvenile about it. "Pepper, if you could go get Dr. Erskine, that would be very much appreciated."

"Surely."

"Hark! Is that my P's in a pod I hear?"

"Don't call us that, Howard," Peggy said loudly, in the manner of one who had made a particular request multiple times.

"Wha~t?" Howard Stark's head, sporting a shit-eating grin, appeared in the doorway. "How else am I going to refer to my right-hand woman and my future daughter-in-law?"

"By our _names_ , Howard," Peggy said, and Steve thought he caught a hint of a flush on Pepper's face.

"You're no fun, Peg. This the guy you told me about last night? Rogers?"

"Steve Rogers," Steve said, standing up despite the mental whiplash Howard's sudden change of conversation gave him. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Stark."

"How are ya. So, you excited to be _pegged_ as our new--"

" _Howard_ , if _you_ could go get Dr. Erskine, that would be very much appreciated," Peggy cut in swiftly, firmly.

"All right, all right," Howard said, throwing up his hands. "I can tell when I'm not wanted."

"Really? You've never demonstrated such an ability before. And I've given you ample opportunity."

"I am a man of secrets, Peggy. An enigma and a mystery."

"You're going to _mysteriously disappear_ from the face of the earth if you don't go get Dr. Erskine. Brandt thinks we can get this over with before supper, so evidently we need to get a move on."

"Fine, fine," Howard said, with a wave of his hand. "Pepper? Escort me? You know how I like to have a pretty young thing on my arm at all times."

"That would be highly inappropriate, Howard," Pepper said, the corners of her mouth tilting up into a smile. "Both as your colleague and your... _alleged_ future daughter-in-law."

"See," Howard said, wagging his finger approvingly at her, "that's why you're good for him. Be back in a few!"

"Please reconsider marrying into that, Pepper," Peggy said, after Howard had breezed out of the doorway.

"I'll save reconsidering for after there's been an actual proposal," Pepper said, taking one of the empty chairs; it took a second after he watched her do so for Steve to sit down again, as well. "I hope you don't mind the banter, Mr. Rogers. Howard thinks a little levity is good for us."

"Um, "Steve". "Steve" is fine. And I'm not bothered. My dad--he fought in the Great War--he said that you need it out there. Levity. Someone's gotta be the joker. It keeps everyone sane."

"Oh? And are you planning to be the joker, Steve?"

"Oh, no," Steve said, feeling a little surge in his chest; she spoke as if they had accepted him already. "I'm not that funny. Dad wasn't either."

"Jokers are insane, themselves," Peggy said, her gaze still intense but her voice now musing. "That's the last thing we need for this project. Otherwise we'd be using Howard."

"Or Tony, I suppose," Pepper said, with a wistful laugh.

"Heaven forbid."

"Ordering, Dr. Erskine; roger, pick up Dr. Erskine," Howard's voice floated in through the doorway, and three heads turned to see him, accompanied by a lab coat-clad, bespectacled man about a decade older than him.

"Thank you, Howard," Peggy said, and Steve rose to his feet once more. "Dr. Erskine, this is Steve Rogers. I left a memo about him at your desk."

"Yes, I received it," Dr. Erskine said, shutting the door behind him, and Steve was surprised to hear him speak with a thick German accent. "Steven, I'm Dr. Abraham Erskine; it's very good to meet you." Steve murmured a reciprocal greeting as Dr. Erskine shook his hand. "Please, sit." Steve did so. "You have his file, Agent Carter?"

"Right here." Peggy pulled open a drawer at her desk, retrieved the manila file from the day before, and handed it to Dr. Erskine when he reached for it.

"Steven." Steve's attention snapped to Dr. Erskine. "Agent Stark is involved in this project directly and so should have access to your records." Steve bobbed his head. "Agent Potts, however, is not, and if you wish, we can ask her to leave the room."

"N-no, she can stay," Steve said, feeling a pit form in his stomach; he squared his shoulders, and set his jaw. "She can even read it, if she wants. There's nothin' in that file for me to be ashamed about."

"All right." Dr. Erskine's tone was neutral, but Steve hoped the barest hint of a smile on the man's face was an approving one. Steve watched the man flip open the file and quickly scan whatever was written within. After a moment he pulled out a second piece of paper from behind the first...Peggy's notes, Steve figured. Finally Dr. Erskine reached into his pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper--Peggy's memo--and studied it for a handful of seconds, before closing all three papers in the file, and handing it to Howard.

"Well. He's certainly very different than the candidates that Phillips has been presenting me."

"Phillips has terrible taste in men," Peggy deadpanned, and Steve spent a surreal second wondering if they were _that_ progressive here before he realized she had been making a joke.

"Wow, kid," Howard said, flipping the pages between his fingers, his eyebrows raised. "You've had a, uh...a rough life so far, huh?"

"What happens when you're born early, I guess; it's nothing I haven't been able to handle," Steve said, shooting for nonchalant.

" _These_ ought to be fixable," Dr Erskine said, leaning over Howard's shoulder to point out whatever he was speaking about. " _This_ , though; I'm not sure. He might still have to continue with his regular treatment, afterwards."

"You don't have any...?"

"Not anymore. Not after last time; I removed it. Too dangerous. There's something similar in there now, yes, but not quite the same. I'm not sure what effect it would have on a...well. On that condition."

"Would it be okay if I asked you what exactly you're talking about?" Steve piped up, though his rollicking gut told him plenty enough.

"You may ask, but the answer in its entirety is currently classified," Dr. Erskine said, looking up. "What I _can_ tell you is that the military wants a new kind of soldier, and the SSR is intent on providing them with just that."

"And I'm...I'm that new kind of soldier?"

"Possibly. Agent Carter is certainly under the impression that you might be."

Steve glanced at Peggy, who bobbed her head without a trace of self-consciousness. "And...and why is that?"

"Well." Dr. Erskine pulled out the page of Peggy's notes, and her memo. "Your attitude, mainly. What she was able to see of it during your exam yesterday, and your run-in at the expo last night. We decided to call you in today to get a better idea of, well, _you_."

"I...well, I'll tell you whatever you need to know."

"With complete honesty, please."

"Yes, yes, of course."

"Good. Well, then," Dr. Erskine glanced at the memo. "Agent Carter says that you have tried to enlist five times."

"That's right."

"This despite your, and I do mean this tactfully, numerous health concerns."

"They're not that bad."

"Asthma and palpitations are..."not that bad" in your eyes?"

Steve shrugged. "Plenty of people got it worse."

"True. Still, I can't think of anyone who would fault you for not bothering to even consider entering the service."

"I had to try."

"Once, yeah, that's understandable," Howard said. "Twice, I can see, even, but five times?"

"What can I say? I still wanted to go," Steve said, with a cheeky smile.

"Ah, yes." Dr. Erskine glanced at the memo. "You didn't answer Agent Carter when she asked you why you wanted to go overseas. You were interrupted, this says."

"Your friend didn't seem to want to let you talk to me," Peggy offered wryly.

"Yeah, he's...he's not too keen on the thought of me going over there," Steve said, and tried to ignore the knot in his stomach that formed instantly when he thought of Bucky.

"So you do have loved ones who are explicitly advising you not to go," Dr. Erskine said. "Which makes your determination all the more intriguing."

"It's really not that intriguing," Steve said, feeling a tug of embarrassment pull on his shoulders, a flush of it run across his face. "I was raised to believe that if you're capable of doing the right thing, you do it. And if you're not capable, you still try. That's the long and short of it."

"And what makes going overseas to fight "the right thing", Steven? In your own words, with your own reasoning," Dr. Erskine continued, when Steve opened his mouth. "I don't want to hear any propaganda from you. You promised us complete honesty, remember." His stern expression softened a bit. "If you wish, you may take a moment to gather your thoughts."

"Thanks," Steve managed to laugh out, while his mind raced to organize itself, and to steel him up. It had been hard enough, having Bucky stand silently over his shoulder, finding out at same time he did. To explain it aloud, point by point...

But this was his chance. And they would not be let down by his weakness.

"My mother was born in Ireland, in County Limerick," Steve said, boldly; he briefly wondered what Peggy, as a Briton, thought of that, but she merely nodded, her gaze fixed on him. "But my grandparents, her parents, had moved there from Lithuania. Their family name was Milavetz. They were Jewish. _I'm_ Jewish; my dad even converted so he could marry my mother."

"Don't be nervous kid; I'm Jewish too," Howard said.

"As am I," Dr. Erskine said, with an indescribable tone.

Steve nodded, feeling a pinprick of relief. "My mother and her family came to America in '04, after...there was some nastiness in Limerick City that they wanted to get away from, before it got worse. But they were the only branch of that family that moved around. The rest of the Milavetzes had stayed in Lithuania. But they kept in contact. Ma would get letters from her aunts and uncles and cousins all the time, before she passed. And even after that, they would write to me. Pretty regularly, too. Until last year," he said, like a hammer strike, "when the letters stopped coming. At first I thought it was just because of the war; the war was making it difficult for mail to get through, but then I got. I got a letter, from one of my second cousins. Well, it was actually _posted_ from Limerick, from some of my grandparents' friends who had stayed there. The letter had been smuggled to them."

"And what did the letter say?" Dr. Erskine asked, sounding and looking as though he already had some inkling.

Steve reminded himself to breathe. _Eight in, eight out_ he had told Bucky earlier; he cut that in half for himself, and sped up the pace. "The letter said that...that the, that the rolkommandos had gone through their village and..." His hands closed convulsively in his lap; his fingers turned red, and then white. "They're dead. Everyone else is dead. Shot in cold blood," Steve spat, like poison in his mouth. "And the survivors, my second cousin and some of the other villagers, they're in...they were rounded up and sent to Kovno. I have no idea if they're still there. If any of them are even still alive."

He hadn't realized his vision had gone out of focus until he blinked, and the others' reactions came clearly into view. Pepper's hand had covered her mouth; Howard had drifted closer to her at some point, and her other hand gripped his arm. Peggy's expression was unchanged except for the gray that washed out her features, and Dr. Erskine was staring at the floor.

"Do you guys know? That this, things like this are happening?"

"My wife and I fled Germany several years ago," Dr. Erskine said softly. "We had a feeling things would eventually go this way."

"The Nazis ain't exactly been subtle about the fact that they hate us, so I can't say I'm surprised either, kid," Howard said thickly his face frozen between his characteristic nonchalance and the nausea rising up into his throat from his stomach.

"Howard," Pepper said, suddenly, pulling on the arm she had taken hold of. "Howard, _Tony_..."

"He's safe where he is, Pepper," Howard said automatically, without blinking, as if incapable of processing the alternative.

"No," Pepper said, standing up. "No, I have to...we have to get in contact with him. He has to know, we have to warn him..."

"Pepper--" But she had already started for the door. Howard attempted to grab her hand, and missed by inches; he threw a backward glance at the room before he followed her out, calling her name as if he had a hope of slowing her down.

"I am sorry to have made you talk about it," Dr. Erskine said, after the door drifted shut behind Howard.

"Don't be," Steve said, listlessly. "You needed my honesty."

"Thank you for your frankness," Peggy said, reaching up to take Steve's file from Dr. Erskine. "We certainly can't fault you for wanting revenge."

"No, that's not...that's not it," Steve said, shaking his head.

"You _don't_ want to kill the people responsible for...?"

Steve opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again; he inhaled, brokenly, and exhaled heavily. "I'm not saying that if I ever _did_ see those people, I wouldn't...I don't know if I'd be able to control myself, if it came to that," he said, with a bitter laugh. "But I probably never will find them. I know that. That's not why I want to join the army."

"Then why do you?" Peggy asked, her voice no less brisk and professional, but somehow wispier.

"Because...because there are people in the world who can just... _butcher_ entire communities, and not lose sleep over it. Who'll _enjoy_ it. And people like that are in power now." _They always were_ he almost said, remembering Aksot's stony, hollow silence when he asked her about where she got those awful scars on her back; Ma clutching him to her side when they walked back home on Saturday mornings, talking loudly to drown out anything shouted in their direction. "They can do whatever they want. And I can't accept that. I _won't_ accept it." He lifted his head, to look Peggy directly in the eye. "So I'm going to do the most I can to stop them. I am not going to live quietly in a world where getting away with something like this is possible. I refuse to."

Peggy stared back at him, her face unreadable. Dr. Erskine shifted his weight between his feet, his gaze somehow both resting on Steve and focused somewhere far away, before he reached down and took Steve's file out of Peggy's hands once more.

"If that is genuinely how you feel, we can offer you a chance."

For a moment the word was ephemeral around Steve's head, and he stood up as if to assure himself that he was still firmly rooted in reality.

"Only a chance," Dr. Erskine continued. "You are, as you may have surmised, not the only person we've scouted. Starting next Monday all of you will be hosted at Camp Lehigh for a week of basic training. We wanted _more_ than one week, of course, but...circumstances have intervened. By the end of that week we will have selected, hopefully, the soldier we want for this project."

"And you're gonna make m--him that new kind of soldier?" Steve asked, just not-dazed enough to catch his presumption.

"If it works, yes."

"What if it doesn't?"

"The risks will be fully explained to the person we choose," Peggy said. "I apologize for how cagey we're being on this point, Steve, but it's rather important that not too many specifics get out."

"Right. Right, I understand."

"Good." Peggy sat back in her chair. "Your enlistment card, please." Steve shoved his hand into his pocket, produced the card, and nearly tripped over his feet on the way to hand it to her. The sound it made when she ripped it in half was like a choir of angels. "Allow me a moment to get you a new one."

"Thank you," Steve said, like he had overfilled his mouth with water and it spilled out when he tried to speak.

"You know this is no guarantee," Peggy said, glancing up at him from where she was rummaging around a drawer. "If you aren't chosen and you don't pass basic, you'll be back to square one."

"I know, I understand, I'm just...I'm grateful for the opportunity."

"Then I expect you won't waste it," Peggy said, with a small smile, as she found the papers she needed; she separated one from the pack, and set it on the desk. "Fill this out, please."

Steve's hand shook as he did; he winced when the ink smeared slightly, the pounding in his ears screaming at him that he was already inadequate, already ruining his chances. Peggy accepted the form back from him without commentary on its neatness, and handed him the rest of the papers, stapled while Steve had been writing.

"Your orders, including when and where you are to report next Monday."

"Thank you. I mean. Yes ma'am."

"Dr. Erskine. If you'd do the honors."

"Gladly." Peggy slid her chair to the side, to let Dr. Erskine open another drawer and produce a rubber stamp and a pad of ink. Steve didn't breathe as he watched him wet the stamp, and then press it to the bottom right corner of the form Steve had filled out. 

The wet ink of the A1 shone brightly in the harsh glare of the overhead lights as Dr. Erskine handed the paper to him.

"Mazel tov, soldier."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know for a fact that at this point in time no branch of Judaism allowed intermarriage, and I'm *pretty* sure the Presbyterian church wouldn't have allowed it either, so it would be necessary for either Joseph or Sarah to convert in order to be married in a religious institution. 
> 
> [TV Tropes states](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger) that Dr. Erskine's wife was Jewish in the lead-in comic to CA:TFA, and he himself is designated as Ambiguously Jewish, so I decided to go the whole hog with him. (Also, "Erskine" is apparently a Scottish name? So we'll pretend it's an alias for his protection, and his real last name is Eckerstein.) I hadn't headcanoned the Starks as Jewish until [Pargoletta](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Pargoletta/pseuds/Pargoletta) came along, but the more I think about it the more I really like the idea, and it does have real-life support (with Stark perhaps being a variant spelling of Starck, [a German-Jewish surname](http://www.avotaynu.com/books/MenkNames.htm), and with Carbonel, as an Americanization of Carbonelli, which could be a diminutive of Carbon/Carbone, being a name taken by [Sicilian Jews who were forcibly converted to Catholicism in the 15th century](http://www.italian-family-history.com/jewish/Sicilia.html). So the story there is that Maria Carbonel returned to her Jewish roots after marrying Howard Stark.
> 
> PS GO READ PARGOLETTA'S STUFF; [Strong Hand and Outstretched Arm](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5267603/chapters/12154742) slapped my heart around a bit, in the best way possible.
> 
> [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerick_boycott) is information on the Lithuanian-Jewish community in Ireland and the Limerick Boycott. [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Lithuania_during_World_War_II#The_Holocaust) is information on the Holocaust in Lithuania.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warnings: body image issues/dysphoria; racism and misogyny, including slurs. I haven't censored the slurs, but if one of you guys reading this is uncomfortable with that, just message me and I'll censor them.**  
>     
> Based on further research I've considered it inappropriate to refer to Steve's training as "Basic Training", though I will be drawing from my research thereof (mainly from [here](http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/002/2-2/CMH_Pub_2-2.pdf) and [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Basic_Training)), as well as the montage in CATFA. So though I'll be incorporating a lot of the same principles, please don't take this as an accurate portrayal of what basic training is like. (I've made minor edits to the previous chapter to reflect this development; I don't think you need to go back and reread unless you're a really huge fan of my syntax or something.)

The same voice that had scolded Steve for smearing the ink on his new enlistment card was in full force the morning he left. It started in with _How dare you make Aunt Win cry; think of all this family has done for you_ when the Barnes dropped him off at the train station at around 2am, before quickly switching tack to _Not like you're going to make it out of this any different than you started_ once he pulled out of the station. It haunted the sketchy, disjointed dreams that danced across his brain as he napped on the train and then in the cab; growing more obnoxious as he blundered--or so it felt like to him--his way to the front gate of Fort Lehigh and clumsily handed over his papers showing he had a right to be here. It was nigh unto screaming as he tried to inconspicuously slip into the First Aid building to hand over his nebulizer and medications for inspection and safekeeping in exchange for standard-issue clothing, and had gone beyond sound to just a heavy feeling in his gut after he found the Project Rebirth barracks, left his trunk at the foot of the bed whose nameplate established it as his, quick-changed into the clothes that had been given him, and then beat it in the direction where the candidates for this project were to experience their first roll call...

...slamming right into another person in the process, and knocking them both to the ground.

This was too much.

"Ow, _jeez_..."

"On your left," Steve muttered sardonically, to which he received a bark of a laugh that at least sounded sincere. He turned himself over, into a sitting position; the other man had already fully righted himself. Steve looked up, blinked, and ordered himself not to stare at this guy the way he had stared at Nick.

"You okay?" the stranger asked.

"Huh? Yeah!" Steve plastered a grin onto his face. "Doin' great. My plan is going swimmingly."

"Plan?"

"Yeah, of course, the plan. What, don't _you_ routinely make new friends by plowing into them at four in the morning?"

That earned him a laugh, this time assuredly genuine. "I usually do it at Bible Study, but hey, whatever floats your boat."

"Steve Rogers," Steve said, sticking his hand up and out. "Good to meet ya."

The stranger reached, and then hesitated, studying Steve's hand for a long moment. Steve lowered his arm, and then offered his other hand; this seemed to reassure the man, who finally accepted the offer and helped haul him to his feet. "Sam Wilson. Likewise."

"We the first ones here?"

Sam shook his head and glanced behind him; Steve saw a group of about a dozen men standing several feet away from them. "I think it's nearly everyone that's already here. I just figured I'd put in a few laps before we had to line up."

"Oh. Sorry I...interrupted."

"'s'ok," Sam said, with a shrug. "That was my last lap, anyway; it's just about 0500." He gestured to the sliver of sunlight heralding the oncoming dawn. "I was just runnin' around some of the buildings, nothing formal. We do it at Tuskegee, so..."

"Tuskegee?"

"Tuskegee Airfield. You know, out in Alabama? Where they train the colored pilots?"

"No, no, I know what Tuskegee is, I'm just...surprised. That you've already gotten some training in."

"I think everyone has, at least from what I was overhearing," Sam said, and the sinking feeling Steve felt in his gut must have shown on his face, because Sam continued with, "Are you fresh out of recruitment?" Steve nodded mutely, all other thoughts drowned out by the voice, now helpfully informing him that there was no way he'd be able to catch up with Sam or any of the others. "Well...well, hell, that's not so bad. You musta impressed your SSR scout if they took you in without any training, right? I know for me, I was only out at Tuskegee for couple weeks when Agent Carter asked me to come out here, so..."

"Peggy--I mean, Agent Carter? She scouted you?"

"Yeah," Sam said, bobbing his head. "She picked me out of the whole 99th." Even in the dim light of pre-sunrise his smile lit up his whole face. "She said she liked my flying. Ain't hardly been in the air, it feels like, but she likes my flying. How about you? How'd she find you?"

"She was there at my initial examination. I thought it went pretty poorly, but she called me in for an interview the next day, and...well, here I am."

"So, between the two of us, obviously she knows potential when she sees it."

"I hope so."

A high, piercing whistle cut through the air, and Sam muttered a small profanity as he took off, Steve running after him. The candidates were scrambling to form a straight line out of the casual clumping they had previously arranged themselves in, and Steve and Sam latched themselves onto it just in time for a female voice to bark out "Recruits! Attention!"

Speak of the devil.

"Gentleman, some of you already know me," Peggy said; she had come upon the group from behind, passed by Sam at the very end of the line, and now she paced in front of the men, surveying them. "But for the benefit of those who don't, I shall introduce myself. My name is Agent Margaret Carter. I'm with the Strategic Science Reserve, and I am a close colleague of Dr. Erskine, whom you all should have met. I will be one of the people observing your progress over the next few days."

"Lookin' forward to bein' _observed_ , Queen Victoria," someone to Steve's left muttered.

Peggy's right foot, hovering in the air mid-step, came down calmly but firmly into the dirt, and then turned on its heel, toward whomever it was who had spoken. "Step forward."

A snicker ran through the line--Steve clenched his jaw, and from the corner of his eye saw Sam give a small bite to his lower lip--and the man did as bade, his step a self-consciously casual swagger.

"State your name."

"Gilmore Hodge, Your Majesty," was the reply, with an accent that seemed just as affected as the swagger.

"You will refer to me as "ma'am" when you are given leave to speak," Peggy snapped, her voice like winter air. "And, as I called you to attention, now is not one of those times."

"Well shucks, _ma'am_ , I was only expressin' my enthusiasm for this project," Hodge retorted with a sneer.

"Yes, well, you are rapidly eroding _my_ enthusiasm for the project," Peggy said, turning her head, with the look of one who had smelled something unpleasant on her face. "Back in line, now. Keep your thoughts to yourself."

"All right, whatever you say," Hodge muttered under his breath, just loud enough for everyone to hear, as he took a step back, his hands raised in a mockery of contrite surrender. "Bitch."

Peggy moved like a lightning strike, slamming the heel of her boot down on Hodge's foot, and then smashing the heel of her palm up against his nose when he doubled over. The force sent him stumbling back, and the unevenness of the landscape tripped him up so that, despite his best efforts at recovery, he ended up sitting hard on the ground, his hands covering his face.

"I believe I told you that you were to refer to me as "ma'am"."

Sam pressed his lips tightly together to keep from laughing. Steve kept his gaze straight ahead, but felt a smirk forming.

"Agent Carter, I see you are already breaking in the candidates," a voice said from behind Peggy.

"It would appear that some of them have never learned that there are consequences for their actions," Peggy replied, turning to acknowledge the colonel, flanked by Howard and Dr. Erskine, approaching the group. "I hope you will agree with me that such an attitude has no place in the military, or in life," she continued, stepping out of the colonel's way to fall in with her colleagues.

"Get your ass up out of that dirt and stand in line at attention until someone comes and tells you what to do," the colonel said, eyeing the man on the ground.

"Damn, Carter," Howard muttered, glancing at Hodge and the stream of blood pouring out from his nose as he hastened to obey; Steve somehow got the feeling that he shouldn't be listening in, but at this point could not stop it. "Hate to see how you'll discipline Sharon when she's old enough to backtalk you."

"For those of you who do not know," the colonel continued loudly, addressing the entire line, and Steve tried to push _Who's Sharon?_ out of his head in favor of paying attention as the colonel began pacing just as Peggy had. "I am Colonel Chester Phillips and I am the liaison between the military and the SSR on behalf of Project Rebirth. As for who the rest of you are," he brandished the clipboard tucked into his elbow. "I will call your name and you will reply "Sir", is that clear?"

"Yes, Sir!"

_Is she Peggy's daughter? Is Peggy married? No, she doesn't wear a ring. I don't think she does, anyway; I don't remember seeing one. I guess that doesn't mean anything; she might take it off for work. Do they even let married women work in the SSR? I guess it's plausible, with a war on and all. Is her husband serving somewhere? This isn't my business. Is he dead? Did she even have a husband to begin wi--_

"Rogers, Steven!"

"S-sir!" Steve yelped, wincing at the stutter. He saw Phillips' eyebrows shoot up into his hairline as he took Steve in, but in lieu of any comment Phillips merely checked the name off the clipboard and continued.

"Rumlow, Brock!"

"Sir!"

"Wilson, Samuel!"

"Sir!"

Once more Phillips paused, this time throwing a glance back at Peggy; she returned it with a squaring of her shoulders, and a face as deliberately guileless as she could make it. He refrained again from commentary, but the hard look on his face when he handed her the clipboard clearly said _We'll be talking later_.

"General Patton," Phillips said loudly, resuming his pacing, "had said that wars are fought with weapons, but they are won by men. _We_ are going to win this war because we have both the best weapons _and_ the best men, and because both are going to get better. _Much_ , much better. You are here as the first part of an experiment aimed at designing a new breed of super soldier, through the miracle of modern biochemistry, as provided by one Dr. Abraham Erskine." He turned to gesture to Dr. Erskine, who bobbed his head in acknowledgement. "By this Friday afternoon, we will have chosen the first man to be so remade. The rest of you, if we deem you qualified, will be held in reserve, pending the successful completion of the initial experiment. At the end of the entire process, whether you are chosen or not, you will be returned, or assigned as the case may be, to your bases, to complete your basic or advanced training. Dr. Erskine, Agent Carter, Agent Stark, and myself will be making our selections based on intelligence, strength, endurance, and leadership ability," he continued, punctuating each quality with a raised finger. "The men we choose will have not only completed every test put in front of them, they will have excelled at them."

He ceased pacing, and ran his gaze down the line of candidates; to his credit, he let his eyes linger on Sam and Steve for no longer or shorter a time than any of the others.

"You've got approximately four and a half days to impress us, fellas. Let's get this show on the road."

*

_Join the army!_ Steve's propaganda poster, if he were ever commissioned to draw one, would say. _See the world! Serve your country! Learn new and exciting ways to humiliate yourself!_

Well, that wasn't quite accurate. He was humiliating himself in old and familiar ways, just in new locales. It was a small blessing that they'd been allowed to choose their own battle buddies; he'd already embarrassed himself in front of Sam, and Sam didn't seem intent on punishing him for it; in fact Sam had immediately turned to Steve when Phillips ordered them to make their selections. He had to admit, while he didn't exactly appreciate the concerned and befuddled looks Sam gave him as he struggled to get through one sit-up in the time it took any of the others to blow through three, it was certainly better than the half-suppressed laughter he heard from either side of him. He was better when they switched positions, and he could concentrate on putting the whole weight of him into pinning down Sam's feet, and not on how easily this exercise was coming to his partner.

After sit-ups came push-ups, for which Steve had begun to build up an illusion that he was acclimating himself to the exertion, until Peggy yelled "Faster, boys, come on! My grandfather has more life in him, God rest his soul," which effectively killed that line of wishful thinking. It got worse when Phillips ordered them to switch to jumping jacks, and after a few seconds yelled out "Rogers, you're making me cry!"

Someone--Hodge, or Rumlow, maybe--actually laughed out loud at that one. Phillips snapped his head in that man's direction, his eyes narrowed, and announced "Another ten minutes of jumping jacks, thanks to the Joker over here."

If Rebecca were here, Steve would have bet with her that he'd be the one who ended up paying for that, no matter who Phillips had laid the blame on. He would have doubled the bet, when the next ten minutes were done and Phillips informed them that instead of thirty minutes to run three miles before breakfast at 0600, they now had only twenty.

"Oh, and by the way, none of you get to eat until the last man completes the run."

By the time Steve stumbled over the finish line at 0615, he figured that if wheezing so hard that he could feel his intestines pushing up against his spine didn't kill him, then the other Rebirth candidates, waiting for him with expressions ranging from surly to vengeful, surely would. Luckily, or unluckily, Peggy took one look at him and snapped "Infirmary, now."

Medicinal coffee for breakfast was better than nothing, he supposed. The nurse offered him an apple once he was finished with the nebulizer, but he turned her down.

"Swim test; seeing how many times you can lap the lake in an hour," Phillips barked, when Steve approached the shore at something of a run. "Move your ass, you're--" Steve had already kicked off his shoes and socks, and was pulling his shirt over his head as he waded into the water, "--twenty-five minutes behind."

Swimming, at least with his head above water, was something Steve could do pretty well. As a kid he had found it one of the few physical activities he could do without wearing himself out in thirty seconds, and consequently his family would practically throw him in the water at every conceivable opportunity; he had kept it up until his breasts began to show, and had very happily returned to it after the Neo-Hombreol made them all but disappear. The water supported his gangly limbs, which in turn put less stress on his heart and lungs; his tiny frame aided in speed. After the disaster of the last two hours maybe this would be his chance to redeem himself.

He hadn't quite registered the hand on his ankle before it yanked him down. The knowledge that he'd been dragged under set in at the same time as the panicked realization that he wasn't in deep enough to touch the bottom of the lake and use that to propel himself upwards. He inhaled before he could tell himself to hold his breath, and the rush of water into his nose and mouth triggered his limbs to flail in a struggle to get him to the surface.

A hand--bigger, rougher than the first--brushed and then grabbed his wrist, and Steve was pulled up, coughing up water and gasping for breath once his head broke through, his feet kicking wildly underneath him to keep himself afloat. From a few feet away he heard someone laughing.

"Steve! Steve, shit, you okay?" Sam lifted Steve's arm and ducked under it, so that it was slung around Sam's shoulders; their feet brushed against each other as they tread water.

"Fine," Steve coughed out, water stinging his soft palate as it dripped into his throat from the inside of his nose.

"God dammit...I'm sorry, Steve. I was hoping I'd get to you first."

"Who...?" Steve gasped.

"That was Hodge did it to you. Rumlow tried to get me, before, when we first got in; glad to say he got a kick in the face for his trouble." He felt Steve shudder against him; at first he thought Steve had laughed, but no mirthful sound came out of him. "Steve, you all right?"

"I'm fine," Steve barked, pulling his arm away from Sam; Sam felt him kicking his feet all the more furiously.

"'Cause you're breathing all--"

"I'm ok--" a wheeze cut him off mid-word, "I'm okay, Sam, really." Sam raised his eyebrows at him, _You would sound more convincing if you weren't panting like a dog_ plain on his face. "Sam, I just got in, I'm not quitting just because some jerk--"

"All right, all right, just..." Sam glanced around, trying to gauge how close the others were to them, and drifted closer to Steve. "Just stick by me, okay? In case they try to pull a stunt like that again. You watch my back, I'll watch yours. All right?"

Steve bobbed his head and tried to clear his throat without coughing too hard; a small cache of water bubbled behind his tonsils. "All right."

"And take it easy, man," Sam said, as Steve jumped forward in the water; his chin and mouth submerged but he stopped himself before his nose could go under as well. "It's gonna look bad if I let you end up in the Infirmary twice in one day."

They ended up lapping the lake twice before Phillips called the time, thankfully without further incident. Sam could very easily have outswum Steve, which Steve knew was obvious to both of them, but Sam was deferentially silent in the face of Phillips chastising them for pulling the smallest number of laps out of the entire group, and gave Steve a wry smile when they were ordered to fall into alphabetical formation and march back to their barrack to change into dry clothes.

*

_People do see you naked in the army_ Bucky had said, and Steve remembered it the moment Phillips slammed the door behind them and ordered them to be done in five minutes, when his stomach dropped into oblivion. He realized that his hands had begun shaking when he tried to open his trunk and dropped the lid; the _thud_ of it falling made him wince, and he was overly-quick in reopening it and pulling out a change of clothes.

"You all right, man?" Sam asked; his bed, the last in the row, was left of Steve's.

"Fine," Steve mumbled, standing up without looking at Sam.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me," someone muttered behind Steve, and he hated himself for freezing. He hadn't even taken off his pants.

"Bad enough he's trainin' with us, now we gotta bunk with him, too?" the voice continued, and from the corner of his eye Steve saw Sam, in the middle of pulling a fresh shirt over his head, pause.

"Oh, no way. No way in hell," someone else chimed in. Sam's head emerged from the neck hole, his face purposefully calm. Steve placed his fresh underwear in front of his pelvis, unbuttoning and unzipping his pants from behind it; his hands were shaking for two reasons now. "The army doesn't even have integrated units. Learning how to live with coons ain't necessary to our survival."

Sam's fingers, undoing his belt, squeezed into fists around the leather; he inhaled slowly, deeply, and lightly shut his eyes, before releasing his breath and returning to his task. _Less than five minutes. You don't have time._

From the corner of his eye he saw Steve curled in on himself, fumbling with his clothes in an unnaturally clumsy and hasty manner. He let concern and confusion run through his brain; it had almost washed out the burgeoning rage before someone piped up with "Hope no one brought anything valuable."

Sam bent down, put his hands on the lid to his trunk, and slammed it down with enough force to rattle the window at the head of his bed. The room clammed up immediately; Sam waited a few seconds before opening his trunk again and pulling out fresh pairs of underwear and pants. By the time he straightened up Steve had already changed into the same garments, and he deliberated on whether or not to ask Steve about his odd behavior later as he stripped below the waist and yanked on dry underwear.

Steve was a weird little guy. Not that Sam was complaining though; after gaining access to the fort after twenty minutes of haggling with the guards at the front gate, only to share one look with the group of candidates already assembled and deciding that a run might be a more pleasant alternative to waiting with them, being bowled over completely by accident and then offered a conciliatory handshake was a pleasant surprise.

He snapped his folded pants open a little loudly, just to see the people past Steve flinch at the cracking sound, and allowed himself to feel a bit smug.

"All right, no," someone--Rumlow; his bed was directly across from Steve's--said. Sam hummed loudly, a gnawing feeling developing in his gut. "No way. This is bullshit. I'm not doin' this. I'm not bunking with a fucking nigger."

"You're free to sleep outside," Sam said, just a little louder than casual, as he stepped into his pants.

The room fell deathly quiet except for the creaking of the floorboards under Rumlow's feet as he turned.

"You wanna run that by me again?"

"You heard him," Steve said, whipping around, his arms stuck into the sleeves of a dry shirt, the rest of it clutched to his chest.

"Mind your own business, dickless."

"Hey," Sam barked, stepping forward, his arms folded across his chest; Steve had flinched just a little too hard at the insult. "You got a problem with me, you keep it with me."

A verbal cloud of mock-surprise went up in the room as Rumlow also stepped forward, to meet Sam in the walkway between the two rows of beds. "Well that's real sweet, you defending your boyfriend like that, but, ah. You really think you can tell me what to do, boy?"

"Don't call me "boy"," Sam said, his voice low, knifelike.

"How you plannin' to stop me, boy?" Rumlow pressed; he and Sam were nearly toe-to-toe now, their faces inches from each other.

Whatever Sam had in mind, it was lost as the doorknob to the barrack rattled; Rumlow stepped back just in time for Phillips to toss the door open.

"Thought I told you lazy asses that you had five minutes," Phillips said loudly, and there was a general scramble among those who hadn't completely changed when Peggy appeared in the doorway behind Phillips. "Nope, too late," Phillips continued; Steve had just barely managed to get his shirt over his head. "You get to enjoy the obstacle course in whatever state of undress you are currently in. Get in line and keep your traps shut; don't think we didn't hear you flappin' your lips in here instead of making yourselves decent."

Sam caught a glimpse of the clock as the group hastened to obey, the same as he had when they first walked in, and blinked when he realized that only three minutes had passed since they had gone inside. He flicked his gaze towards Phillips as he fell in; the man stared straight ahead as if he didn't notice that Sam existed.

The corner of his mouth twitched. Whether out of feelings of unmixed gratitude, he couldn't quite say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter and the one that will follow have been a doozies, mainly because it's very difficult to translate a montage into writing, particularly when a) you're introducing a new character, and b) there is actually spectacularly little detailed information about what goes on at army training available on the internet. There *was* actually supposed to be more to this chapter--what's become next chapter is already partially written--but if I kept going then a) this chapter would have become way too long, and b) it would probably take another month and a half to churn out. At this point, to keep my momentum going, I had to post *something*.
> 
> Slightly easier for me has been writing [A Single Brighter Light](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5802196/chapters/13372612), the Stucky prequel to A:GG. I figured that since I reference their backstory often enough, I ought to actually write it out :3
> 
> Now for proper notes...
> 
>  
> 
> [Tuskegee Airmen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Airmen)
> 
>  
> 
> The [battle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Basic_Training#Battle_buddies) [buddy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_buddy) system is a practice whereby soldiers are assigned to one another (or allowed to pick each other) as partners; the idea is that the battle buddy will keep their partner in line, and also provide physical and emotional support (in areas where the system is implemented, the number of suicides and sexual assaults have gone down).


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **TW: racism, including slurs and mild violence; intersexphobic slurs; possible transphobia (see below); outting.** There are some mild spoilers for A Single Brighter Light (including material that hasn't been written yet) in this chapter, also.
> 
> I had this conversation with someone on Tumblr, and I think I ought to write a disclaimer here, in case I'm giving anyone the wrong idea: Steve's relationship to his body is just that, _Steve's_. His experience and feelings, while based on research, are molded to my interpretation of his character and the world he lives in; they are not universal among intersex people in real life and should not be taken as such. I'm not sure whether or not Steve can accurately be described as trans--that's a whole world of identity politics that I'm not qualified to comment on--but for now and the future I plan on warning for both intersexphobia and transphobia just to be safe. There will be other trans and intersex characters in the story, in any case, so it'll probably be relevent.

Steve would have to write to Bucky that his throat didn't once close up during the obstacle course, so there.

Not that the obstacle course hadn't tried to kill him. Or, rather, the other Rebirth candidates had.

 _Yes_ he had felt a bit winded before he even got through the initial entry run, but that wasn't too bad. The tire-hopping was easy, too; it was like those games of hopscotch Rebecca had roped them into when she was too young to have grown out of it, and with his feet bare (he hadn't gotten his shoes on before Phillips interrupted) they were small enough to not get caught on the tires's inner edges. Tiptoeing his way over the long stretch of rocks and gravel that followed in bare feet was nowhere near as easy; he had walked around his neighborhood barefoot during the summers, to make his shoes last as long as possible, until his and Bucky's mothers found out and made sure that he never did that again, so his tolerance for that sort of thing was much lower than it once had been, but not gone completely, as he felt that he made it across in rather good time.

He probably would have made it over the rope hill without absolutely needing to stop and catch his breath if Hodge hadn't stepped on his hand, and then took the opportunity to scrape the heel of his boot against the right side of Steve's face in an ostensible attempt to remove them from each other, pushing with just enough force to make Steve lose his grip on the net and land, hard, on the ground.

He was on his feet again almost before Phillips screamed "Get the hell up, Rogers, you have _got_ to be shitting me right now!" at him from the sidelines, at least.

Sam had been leading the pack until he heard the hard thud of Steve hitting the ground and Phillips screaming; he turned to see what had happened, and in spite of Phillips yelling "Move your ass, Wilson, the hell do you think you're doing?" he lingered until Steve saw him from halfway back up the rope hill and waved him to go ahead. After a second of hesitation, and Steve's gesture getting more insistent, Sam did so, and promptly overtook most of the men running ahead of him, snatching a rifle from the rack that had been set up alongside the course's path, and diving down under the net of barbed wire posted into the ground.

Sam saw that Rumlow was ahead of him by a few feet; Rumlow noticed it, too, when his foot caught on a rock and he glanced back. Sam clenched his jaw and tried not to respond to the sneer Rumlow gave him; instead focusing on planting his elbows in the semi-solid ground directly underneath him and curling his fingers around the rifle, keeping it as high out of the mud as he could without scratching his knuckles against the barbed wire.

From the sidelines Phillips, Peggy, Howard, and Dr. Erskine did not hear the thumps of Rumlow kicking the post nearest Sam's head--the purr of the jeep drowned the noise out--but they and almost everyone heard Sam's yelp of "Shit! God _damn!_ " when the post fell over and a barb ripped his brow, coming dangerously close to scratching his eye.

"Wilson! What the hell is the problem over there?" Phillips shouted, over the sound of Rumlow snickering as he pushed himself away from Sam. Sam squinted an eye shut, to keep blood from staining his vision, and inched forward, his body sinking deeper into the mud now that he was forced to duck even further under the wire. On either side of him the other candidates were struggling through their own lanes, passing by him without glancing back.

"Sam? You all right?" Steve's voice drifted in from behind and to the left of Sam a handful of seconds after the last of the other men had passed him by; Steve had finally tripped his way to the mud crawl and dove under the wire in the lane next to Sam's.

"No, Steve, not really," Sam ground out; he pushed the rifle up to rest between the pads of his fingertips, as high as it could go above the mud, and turned it so it hovered parallel to his body, above his left shoulder; he elbowed forward, hissing when a particularly sharp barb scratched the back of his hand. 

Steve's first instinct was to reach out and push the wire away from Sam's face; the same barb that had cut into Sam's hand quickly put the kibosh on that, in conjunction with Phillips screaming at Steve to " _get that rifle out of the God damn mud!_ " Sam was probably muttering at him to go ahead alone; Steve didn't quite hear him over his observance of Sam using the barrel of his rifle to push the wire up, and his decision to turn his own rifle sideways, perpendicular to his body, and use his own barrel to push the wire even further and more fully up, out of the way of Sam's face.

"It'd look bad if I let you end up in the Infirmary," Steve said, when Sam opened his mouth to protest.

"I'm gonna hit you when we get out of here, fair warning."

They crawled forward in tandem, elbows sinking into the ground up to their forearms as they struggled to keep the butts of their rifles out of the mud; Sam swearing when their coverage was incomplete and the barbs scratched the back of his head, Steve apologizing and redoubling his efforts when that happened, until Sam pulled ahead completely of the downed post and scrambled the rest of the way out. Steve followed in stops and starts, the mud catching and holding his less powerful frame more strongly than it had Sam's. Sam heard him grunting and panting against the strain, shouldered the rifle, and dropped to his hands and knees, reaching in once Steve was close enough to grab hands with, and pulling until their combined effort freed him.

On the sidelines Phillips made a low sound and glanced at his watch. Peggy's mouth quirked, and she scratched a few notes onto her clipboard.

"Didn't have to do that," Steve panted, once he was halfway to his feet.

"You didn't have to, either," Sam said, helping Steve straighten up fully. "Oh, and..." Sam waited for Steve to shoulder his own rifle, and then thumped the back of Steve's head. "Don't ever quote me to me again."

"Got it," Steve said, rubbing the spot Sam had said before jogging a few feet ahead. "Come on. We're in last place."

"You're tellin' me," Sam muttered. By now the rest of the group was far ahead of them. The upside to that, Sam thought, was that Rumlow and Hodge weren't close enough to cause them any more hindrances, unless they had somehow laid booby traps in their wake.

More mud lay ahead of them that, thankfully, they were allowed to walk through, before the course led them into the forest that encircled the camp. Orange paint marked the path they were expected to take, a path predictably covered in thick, protruding, tightly-packed tree roots that were easy to trip over or stub toes against, and where there were no roots, then a ground littered with rocks just small and sharp enough to scrape up the bottoms of their feet (Sam had also not had enough time to put on his shoes).

"Glad that you could make it, gentlemen!" Peggy called lightly from several feet away, her hand resting on the trunk of one particular tree. "You will be finishing the rest of this portion of the obstacle course in the canopy," she continued, pointing up. "You'll see a flagpole once you get up there; head in that direction and don't come out of the trees until you reach the end of the forest. Clear?"

"Yes ma'am," Steve said immediately, echoed by Sam; Peggy moved out of the way as Steve put his hands on the tree trunk and tried to dig his feet into the sides.

"You ever climb a tree before?" Sam asked, after a few seconds of watching Steve struggle.

"I've climbed a couple fire escapes in my day," Steve ground out, as the bark scraped the palms of his hands and soles of his feet.

"Here." Sam tapped Steve's shoulder; Steve looked down to see Sam crouching, cupping his hands together. "I'll give you a lift."

"I can--" Sam raised his eyebrow at Steve, and Steve stepped into Sam's hand without another protest, crawling up the tree to assist as Sam lifted him up. Sam jumped, grabbed onto the branch that he boosted Steve onto, and pulled himself up by sheer force of upper body strength.

"Oh, those fucking..." Sam muttered, once he had settled himself on the branch and took in his new surroundings.

"I take it trees aren't supposed to look like this?" Steve said, surveying the array of broken branches that lay ahead of them.

"Why would they even...shit like this _slows them down_. If they're trying to impress Phillips..." The rest of Sam's tirade was lost in his throat and jaws as he looked around for an intact path. The sound of another branch breaking jerked him forward. "Come on."

Picking their way through the canopy, trying to follow a fully intact path, seemed to take hours, though the sun hadn't noticeably moved by the time the flagpole Peggy had spoken about came clearly into view. Peggy herself had remained patiently silent, watching them with a hawk's gaze as they wove over and under whatever unbroken limbs they could find. Steve kept up with Sam as best he could; there was a telltale sensation in his chest warning that an attack of some sort was imminent if he didn't calm down. Sam, for his part, was willing his anger to fuel rather than hinder his focus. He hadn't really expected any different--he had even told Peggy as much, when she had informed him that he was a candidate for Project Rebirth--but expectation was not a precursor to acceptance by any stretch.

"We're almost there," Sam called gruffly to Steve, a few feet behind him.

"Yeah?" Steve called back. "Good. You looked like you were getting tired."

"Exhausted, thanks for noticing."

"Ah, Wilson, Rogers!" Phillips called, when the pair of them finally reached the branches adjacent to the clearing. "So nice of your Highnesses to grace us with your presence. We've been waiting so patiently for your arrival."

"Yeah, I'll bet," Sam muttered; Steve snorted. Peggy strolled out of the trees beneath them, glancing up.

"Gentlemen, do you see that flag?" she called up to them, pointing at the aforementioned scrap of cloth fluttering above the heads of other candidates who were just on the verge of giving up on obtaining it. "That flag means we're at the halfway mark and you've got another several miles of running ahead of you, unless you manage to capture it and deliver it to Colonel Phillips. If you do, you'll get a head start on learning how to drive one of those, instead." She pointed further afield, to where two RL45s sat almost majestically in the grass. "Best of luck."

Steve forced himself to look down, to focus on the ground and let his sense of touch guide him down the tree. For once he was glad that life had given him a lot of experience with falling, because when friction failed him and he lost his grip on the tree he managed to land on his feet. He tumbled to his ass a moment later, but without nearly as much pain as he would have had he landed like that first.

Sam crouched while Steve made his way down the tree, glaring at the flagpole; his peripheral vision caught Steve's fall, and he looked down long enough to see Steve pick himself up, with some assistance from the tree, before glancing back up and reassessing his chances. He'd made more impossible leaps, he was pretty sure; he wasn't sure at all, actually, but if the other candidates wanted to make him look like a fool, they had quite another thing coming.

Steve heard a rustle of leaves above him and looked up just in time to see Sam go soaring through the air. The flagpole rattled as Sam collided with it, wrapping his arms and legs around it on contact.

The surface was smoother than Sam anticipated, and a loud squeal filled the air as he slid several feet down before he could stop himself. He clung tightly to the pole for a few seconds, gathering his bearings, and then pulled himself up with his hands, his knees assisting. The wind of course chose that time to blow past, an icy gust cooled by the wind from the lake, and shook the pole, staying Sam for another several seconds before he felt safe enough to move.

The flag whipped him in the face as he neared it; he squinted his eyes shut to protect them as he struggled to free the flag from its bottom grommet. The fabric wrapped around his head when he reached up to do the same with the upper grommet, nearly startling him into letting go of the pole completely, but he regained his hold immediately despite the lack of vision afforded him. It took several seconds of jerking his hand up and down before he was finally able to slip the flag completely loose; he pulled it close to his chest, trapping the hem of it between his teeth for good measure, and let himself slide back down to the ground.

The pins holding the pole upright scraped against his foot as he made it to the bottom, throwing off his landing and leaving him upended on the ground, but he scrambled to his feet immediately, straightening himself out and up to be as presentable as possible when he turned to Phillips, holding the flag out to him.

"Sir."

Phillips glanced between the hands and Sam's face, before nodding sharply and accepting the proffered flag. "Interesting approach, Wilson."

"I have often found it necessary in my life to go above and beyond convention, sir."

"Fascinating story. I look forward to seeing it in novel format. Meantime go stand at attention next to Carter."

"Sir!"

"Rogers!" Phillips barked as Sam moved to do as ordered.

"Sir?" Steve responded immediately, straightening up from where he was watching Sam go to Peggy, a compersive smile on his face.

"How many RL45s do you see in that field?"

"Two, sir."

"Good, you're not a complete idiot. Think real hard and tell me who's gonna be learnin' to ride that second RL45."

"Whoever puts the flag back up, sir," Steve said, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

"Pack of good God damn geniuses we got here, I swear. Here." Steve stumbled backwards as Phillips all but shoved the flag into his stomach. "For your remarkable ability to rub two brain cells together, you get the first shot."

"Thank you, sir."

"Just hurry up and embarrass yourself quickly, Rogers; we ain't got all God damn day."

"Sir." Steve turned on his heel. The weight of the dirty, patronizing looks the other Rebirth candidates, less Sam, glanced off the back of his neck like the sun as he approached the flagpole and then crouched by it.

"You planning to rocket up to the top or somethin', Rogers?"

Steve grabbed and wriggled loose the same stay that Sam had scraped his foot on, freed the pin that it had been holding in place, and then jumped back to protect his feet as the pole slammed down onto the ground with a loud _clang_ that reverberated through the suddenly completely silent air.

Steve stood, snapped the flag out flat like a freshly laundered shirt, and sought out the rings along the seam that he then attached to the two grommets, before going to the spot just below the bottom grommet and slipping his hands underneath it. The pole was solid, but thankfully not very heavy, even for Steve, and he was able to lift it, his hands walking down the length of it as he dragged it upright. Cradling it in the crook of his elbow when it came time to replace the stays was harder, especially when the wind blew again and he had to sit, hard, to avoid being knocked backwards; he waited the gust of wind out, and then rushed to secure the flagpole before it could start up again.

He was gratified to see jealousy on the faces of the other candidates when he turned back around. A quick glance saw Sam suppressing a grin. Phillips, for his part, looked like he was struggling to decide whether was he was impressed or annoyed.

"Cute stunt, Rogers. Real cute. Go stand next to Wilson before I kick your ass for that." Steve scampered away, partially expecting Phillips to chase him down, but instead the man turned to address the rest of the company. "All right, show's over, gentlemen, sow let's go! Move!"

The sounds of feet trampling the ground filled the air. Phillips sent Steve and Sam an unreadable look as he climbed into the car beside Howard and Dr. Erskine and turned the ignition on; they stared after him as the car rolled away, until "Wilson! Rogers!" caught their, and brought them to, attention.

Peggy surveyed them for a long moment, her arms crossed, before her pinched mouth relaxed into, if not a smile, then a satisfied smirk.

"Nice recovery, boys. About face." Sam turned immediately; Steve knew enough to turn accurately, if less gracefully. "You've got approximately three and half hours to get intimately acquainted with those machines. So I suggest you move your arses. _Go._ "

*

Compared to the long, humiliating slog of the early morning, the three hours with the RL45s was like a day trip to Coney Island, even if Peggy had spent at least 80% of the time telling Steve in excruciating detail everything that he was doing wrong. Sam fared better; _much_ better, by Steve's estimation, though if Sam were to tell the truth he felt about as unsavvy as Steve did, and if he caught on quicker it was only because he was used to operating a military machine in some capacity.

Nevertheless, both of them managed to get the RL45s going, and Peggy, while as severe and brisk as ever, did not seem especially frustrated with them by the time she informed them they were to change into clean clothes and rejoin the rest of the company for lunch, which they both took as her version of praise.

They used it as a buffer against the array of glares that greeted them as they approached the mess and fell into line behind the other candidates. Phillips' stern expression kept the group silent as the filed into the hall and were directed towards the table reserved for them. Lunch came in cans that were all too familiar to Sam, and he laughed when he saw Steve's face after he had opened his.

"I know, just like mama used to make, right?"

"Ah...I can pretty much guarantee you that my mother did not ever make anything like this," Steve said.

"Welp," Sam said, peeling the lid off his own can. "It's all we're gonna get until the war's won, so. Bon appetit."

"...Here." Steve pushed the mess of "stew" around with his fork, spearing anything pink and cubed that he saw and depositing it in Sam's can. He'd do the best he could for as long as possible.

"What, is it not good enough for your Majesty?" Steve made a face at him; Sam grinned back. "You allergic or something?"

"Jewish," Steve said. "We don't eat pork," he continued, when Sam cocked his head. "And...yeah, it _might_ make me sick, actually, since I never had it before."

"Huh." Sam considered the new information, taking a moment to adjust his mental image of Steve, and then bobbed his head as if to settle it in place. "Well, Steve, as your battle buddy, I consider it my sacred duty to take care of that for you." He punctuated his statement by scooping up a forkful of food and shoving it into his mouth. "I hope you appreciate the sacrifice I'm making on your behalf."

"I can see how difficult a struggle this is for you," Steve returned dryly, the tenseness that had been building up in his shoulders dissipating.

"It's a truly Herculean effort, I assure you."

"My hero."

"Ain't they a fuckin' pair," Hodge growled from a few feet away, on the other side of the table, to Rumlow beside him but loud enough for Sam and Steve to hear. "Look at 'em, sharing a meal like goddamn newlyweds. How adorable."

"Shame you couldn't join us on our honeymoon earlier," Sam said brightly, his expression on the pleasant side of neutral. "But I guess not everyone can do everything."

"Well you _do_ got the natural advantage," Rumlow shot back. "I mean, monkeys are good at climbing, aren't they?"

Steve and Sam caught sight of Peggy as she strolled behind Rumlow; the man himself didn't notice until the last words left his mouth, and her palm came for the side of his head.

"I believe lunch time is for eating, not for talking, yes?" Peggy said coolly, as Rumlow ducked another potential attack. "Time management is a useful skill for a soldier to have."

"Yes, ma'am," was the low growl in response.

"Rogers," she continued, glancing pointedly down at the can in front of Steve, "no guarantees, but I'll see what we can do about that."

"You don't...I don't wanna cause any problems, ma'am," Steve mumbled, feeling a stripe of warmth across his cheeks and nose at being so singled out, and at not having noticed that she'd been listening in on his conversation with Sam. "I'll make do. I mean, when we're overseas we're gonna be eating whatever's in front of us, right? And..."

He trailed off, acutely feeling how small he was under Peggy's scrutiny. She eyed him for a long moment, expression unreadable, before she turned her head, assessing the entire table.

"Gentlemen, who is our enemy?" An uncomfortable quiet greeted her as the men who had met her gaze attempted to doggedly avoid it. "Come on now, any of you can answer. You don't even need to raise your hand. _Who_ is our _enemy?_ "

"The Nazis," someone finally answered, after another beat of awkward silence.

"The Axis powers," Sam elaborated.

"Does everyone agree?" A murmur of assent went up. "Then I would say that makes us allies. Any objections?" None were forthcoming. "So tell me, gentlemen, isn't it the duty of allies to _not_ sabotage each other? Indeed, is that not the whole _point_ of being allies?"

Sam glanced around the table; a few men had the decency to look at least relatively chastised.

"Well? That was not a rhetorical question, gentleman. _Is that not the whole point of being allies?_ "

"Yes ma'am!" chorused around her.

"Therefore, Rogers." Peggy pointed at Steve's can, with her finger this time, rather than her eyes. "No guarantees, but I'll see what we can do about that."

"Th-thank you, ma'am," Steve stammered, the warmth spreading across his entire face now.

She bobbed her head sharply, and then turned her piercing gaze back to the group at large. "Oh, and gentlemen? If you try to hinder your fellow candidates from successfully completing any of the tasks set for you, you will be ejected from this project immediately, is that clear?"

They were slightly more prepared to answer this time, but the collective "Yes ma'am" came out a little more sheepish than the one before it.

She met Sam's gaze, surprised and grateful, and then glanced at Steve, who couldn't share the glance directly but peeked up at her from underneath his eyelashes with the same mix of emotions as Sam. Movement caught her peripheral vision, and she turned her head to get a better view of Colonel Phillips, his arms characteristically crossed and his face characteristically set, but the odd glare in his eyes shining special just for her.

"Now shut up and eat, all of you," she said calmly, strongly, as if she were unaffected. "Twenty minutes."

*

Peggy's warning didn't quite get the chance to be heeded, because after lunch the schedule included drilling, drilling, and more drilling, with additional drilling to round out the afternoon before dinner. That involved a blessed lack of human interaction, aside from following Phillips's instructions, and to Steve's relief the pace of marching kept his heart and lungs in steady working order. When dinner rolled around it was a similarly taciturn affair--Sam muttered to Steve that if they weren't thinking up ways to harass the two of them, the other candidates didn't seem to be able to make conversation. They did get a few eyerolls when Peggy strolled around to inform Steve regretfully that he would, in fact, have to make do with picking cubed pork out of his MREs for the week, as the food supplies had been already received in full.

"Thank you for looking into it, ma'am," Steve mumbled, red-faced.

"I will gladly assist him in the disposal of the unwanted food items, ma'am," Sam added with a small grin. Peggy allowed him an amused look before she strolled away, watching the rest of the group with a knife-sharp gaze.

After dinner the group was herded into a building and afforded an hour-long crash course on cartography before being sent back out to see who could map the terrain of the camp best with the remaining hour before they were herded back to the barracks. Steve paid the strictest attention to the lecture, although he was relieved to realize that what he and Bucky and Rebecca had taught themselves about the subject out of books from the Barnes' massive library, so they could map out the exact action of the exploits of Buck Rogers and Princess Wynnogene across Asgard and the rest of Europe, aligned pretty closely with the real deal.

It was Sam, however, whose map-making prowess won the highest praise.

"I had time to familiarize myself with the lay of the camp this morning before roll call," Sam said by way of explanation, mixing modesty with the tiniest bit of smugness after Peggy called him forward.

"Did you fly over it like you did from the tree to the flagpole?" Howard asked from beside Phillips, an amused, approving smile on his face.

"If I had wings I would've, Mr. Stark," Sam returned jovially, noting that Howard's face brightened suddenly, as if struck by an idea. "In fact I used the free time for a run. I found it a better use of my time than waiting around with the other recruits." If these white boys wanted to self-segregate, that was to their detriment, and he was going to take every opportunity to prove it to them.

"You ain't always gonna have an advantage like that, Wilson," Phillips muttered.

"Yes sir I know, but I will utilize every advantage that presents itself to me."

""Utilize every advantage that presents"...jeez, you're articulate enough, aren't'cha Wilson. Get back in line." 

If he'd had the presence of mind, Sam would have been shocked that he managed to get "Yes sir" through his suddenly clenched jaw, preoccupied as he was with resisting the urge to ball his hand into a fist and cram it down Phillips' throat.

"Since Wilson excelled this round he and Rogers've got first shift for CQ," Phillips announced, as Sam turned somehow both sharply and wildly on his heel. He continued speaking, listing off the Charge of Quarters order for the rest of the night, as Sam fell back into line; Steve sent him a questioning look, but glanced away once he saw the dark glint in Sam's eye.

They were marched back to the barracks under orders to gather up the clothes they had muddied and run them to the building where laundry was done, and given the remaining forty minutes or so to handwash and hang up said garments to dry. Sam maintained a stony silence throughout; Steve moved awkwardly around him, sending him surreptititous glances that Sam would have been annoyed by if he didn't periodicially remind himself that Steve was only concerned about him. The supervision of Phillips, Peggy, Howard, and Erskine kept the rest of the group mercifully quiet, as well, up until time was called and they were sent back to their quarters.

"Rogers, Wilson," Phillips barked, as the rest of the company filed into the building; Steve and Sam hung back obediently, taking a clipboard on which to sign their names when it was handed to them. "For the next hour you are in charge of making sure nothing bursts into flames and no one goes in or out of this building. You happen to actually see a fire, you sound that alarm." He gestured to the side of the buiding, where a large bell was built into the wall. "If any of your fellow candidates try to sneak out, you report to Erskine, who will be watching from over there." He pointed to a building not far away. "Erskine will also inform you when your hour is up, at which point you will get your asses in bed. Understood?"

"Yes sir."

The supervising quartet retreated, "Good night, gentlemen" floating after them from all but Phillips, and Steve and Sam watched all but Erskine enter the building Phillips had indicated and shut the door behind them.

"I take it that wasn't a compliment, what Phillips said?" Steve finally said, after a beat.

"Nope," Sam clipped without looking at him.

Erskine, standing in the porch light of the building, rocked on his heels, folded his arms behind his back, and very purposefully looked away. Sam narrowed his eyes, waited to see if Erskine would relent, and then began to stride forward when he didn't.

"Hey," Steve whispered-called after him. "Where you think you're going?"

"There ain't no way that they're not talking about us right now," Sam tossed back just before the point where he figured he'd have to lower his voice. He moved sideways, into the shadow of a tree; from the corner of his eye he saw Steve hesitate, and then trail after him, watching Erskine as he did so.

Sam came up against the wall of the building, crouching underneath a window, just in time to hear Phillips say "--threatening the candidates with expulsion without running it past me."

"So are you saying we _shouldn't_ expel candidates who are purposely sabotaging their brothers-in-arms?" Peggy's voice threw crisply back.

"I'm saying you don't get to act on your own, Carter." Steve appeared fully at Sam's elbow, first crouching and then immediatey kneeling when the pressure proved too much for his knees.

"If I had acted _fully_ on my own I would have tossed them all out right then and there. And in any case, Colonel, I am one of the supervisors for this project. I have as much authority as you do to discipline the candidates according to my discretion."

"Your discretion." Sam and Steve could practically feel the contempt dripping from Phillips' mouth.

"Do you have a problem with that, Colonel?"

"Sometimes yes, Carter. I have a problem with your discretion when it leads you to think sneaking a negro and a ninety-pound asthmatic hermaphrodite onto my army base is a good idea."

Sam looked at Steve just in time to see all the blood drain from his face.

"I did not _sneak_ anyone anywhere. Dr. Erskine was perfectly aware of my picks for this project. So was Howard."

"That's true," Howard piped up helpfully.

"Oh, gimme a _break_ , the pair of you."

"I negleted to mention it to you directly because I fail to see why any of those descriptors should disqualify either Rogers or Wilson," Peggy continued firmly. "I was asked to find men who displayed exceptional determination and integrity. Frankly and with all due respect, Colonel, Rogers and Wilson have those qualities in _spades_ over the other men being considered. We _very_ clearly saw that today."

"You were asked to find men that soldiers would follow into battle. Frankly and with all due respect, Agent Carter, even if we count Rogers as a man, he couldn't lead a dog on a leash. Now _Wilson_ , all right, Wilson I can see going far in one of the colored units, but if we pump him full of serum all we're gonna get is an earful for wasting the army's money. Do I think that's bullshit, _yes_ , but that's the way of things. _You_ of all people should understand that, Carter."

"I _don't_ understand, actually. We are a multinational effort trying to defeat an empire that is _explicitly_ building itself on the destruction of, of "negroes and hermaphrodites" and all manners of people the Fuhrer's gotten it into his head are inferior. How we can pat ourselves on the back for our righteousness when we _ourselves_ won't admit those very same people fully into all levels of society is beyond me."

"Don't talk to me like an academic, Carter."

"I am talking to you like a _sensible_ human being, Colonel."

"Look, I've got nothin' against either of these two, okay? Hand to God, I don't care about the color of Wilson's skin or the size of Rogers' pecker, if you'll pardon my language. I'm being _realistic_. You put either of them in front of Brandt he will laugh his way through signing the order to shut this project down. I'm sorry. That's just how it is."

"Just how it is," Peggy repeated snidely, her voice icy fury. "Well, Colonel, if you're content with that state of affairs, then I suppose that is your prerogative. But if you want to have a better army than Hitler, then you had bloody well better stop thinking like him. _That_ is just how it is."

A door banged shut, and without waiting to see if Erskine would signal them to go or stay, Sam grabbed Steve's arm and hightailed it back towards the barracks. Steve tripped along after him, trying to pull his arm free; he finally managed it after they made it back to their building and he was beginning to wheeze.

"Okay, it looks like no one's coming out," Sam said, after a long moment in which Steve tried to catch his breath; when Erskine sent them a reassuring little wave of his hand he relaxed, leaning up against the wall. "Well. That was...illuminating."

"How..." Steve's lungs squeezed out what he hoped was the last painful exhale he had to take before his breathing righted itself. "How so?" he threw, like a challenge, as if he didn't have to ball his hands into fists to unsuccesfully ward off trembling.

"Well..." Sam drawled, scratching a sudden itch on his face. "We know that there's a serum involved now."

Steve stared at Sam for a solid ten seconds, before the adrenaline building up in his system receded all at once, making him collapse back against, and slide down, the wall next to Sam.

"Yeah, yeah we do. We should eavesdrop more often, me and you. That was pretty, uh...pretty fruitful."

"Whadaya think it does? The serum."

Steve shrugged, throwing up his hands. "Hell if I know, pal. Could ask Dr. Erskine." He jutted his chin in the man's direction.

"Nah. I don't think he meant us to hear that part." Steve shrugged, and they lapsed into a five-second silence before Sam continued. "Maybe it'll make us mutants. Come out the other side with wings or something."

"You've got a thing for flying, I think."

"Well yeah, hell, don't you?" Steve shrugged again. "Okay, that's bullshit. Everyone's got a thing for flying. You never climbed a tree--all right, yeah, you've never climbed a tree before, you said. You never climbed any of those fire escapes and saw the birds up there and think how you'd like to just...take to the sky? Be above it all for a bit?"

Steve considered, bobbing his head back and forth as if trying to conjure up specific memories. "I...yeah, I guess. Every once in awhile."

"Yeah you did. Everyone does." Sam crossed his arms, leaning back against the building. "Everyone does."

"You can ask," Steve said in a low voice, after another five seconds of silence passed.

Sam put his hands up. "Only if you wanna tell."

Despite himself, Steve felt the corner of his lip quirk. Bucky had said something similar when he'd found out, back in March of '30. At the time he figured Bucky was the only person in the world outside of his own family who could stumble upon that information and not use it as a weapon against him; later that circle expanded to the entire Barnes family, and now, he was still praying fervently, it included Sam.

"I can't...process testosterone the way...you, or any of them," he flicked his hand in the direction of their barrack, "can. I mean, it _happens_ , just not to the same extent. So I..." this time he gestured to himself, "...that's why I look different from you all. I used to look even...I've been taking _extra_ testosterone for the past coupla years, which has helped."

Sam nodded; his arms had folded themselves again across his chest as Steve spoke. A dozen half-formed questions buzzed around his head, but the one that came out was "You gonna be able to take that here?"

"That's where being an asthmatic comes in useful," Steve said, with a bitter undertone. "If I have to go to the Infirmary to get my lungs back on track, well, guess what other medication I can take at the same time."

"Ah, so you'll _also_ utilize every advantage that presents itself to you."

Steve glanced up at Sam, whose lips were pressed together and stretched out as wryly as possible. He matched the expression. "Guess so."

"Good thing we're battle buddies, then," Sam continued, shelving whatever else he could think of asking. "Gotta keep my competition close..."

Steve snorted despite his relief at the change in topic. "Competition. Phillips isn't letting us anywhere _near_ that serum."

"Don't tell me you're plannin' on dropping out."

"Hell no," Steve said, the shake of his head as vehement as his tone. "It doesn't matter if they pick me or not. I just need to pass this training to get overseas. There's..." _Bucky and Anya and the twins if they're still alive_ "...there's people over there that I need to protect." Sam nodded his approval slowly, solemnly, and Steve smiled weakly up at him. "How about you?"

"Me?"

"Yeah. Why're you here at," Steve gestured around, "beautiful Camp Lehigh, looking to remake yourself into a superior breed of soldier?"

Sam rolled his eyes, and then jutted his chin towards the window they had crouched under, listening to Phillips and Peggy argue. "I got a world to change."

Steve pursed his lips, and nodded. "An empire to topple."

Sam, wordlessly, offered his hand; Steve took it, and used it to hoist himself to his feet.

"I was goin' for a low-five there..."

"What? Oh--" Steve blinked, and then barked out a laugh. "Sorry." He stuck his hand out again, and Sam made a show of slapping their palms together as he originally intended. "I hope you realize that _this_ ," he gestured to himself, shoulder to hips, "is what you're stuck with 'til Friday?"

The smile Sam turned on him was broad and reassuring and genuine. "It's gonna be a damn good week."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Steve had to learn to drive a motorcycle _somewhere_.](http://ww2db.com/vehicle_spec.php?q=O494)  
>     
> Interesting article on kosher/meat eating in WWII [here](http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/193837/merwin-pastrami-on-rye).
> 
> The adventures of Buck Rogers and Princess Wynnogene begin in [Chapter 5 of A Single Brighter Light](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5802196/chapters/14069812). Steve's relationship to the Maximoffs is explicated in Chapter 8.
> 
> The low-five was apparently invented during the 40s (I lost my link, just trust me).
> 
> I think you can see where I lost steam and then got it back in this chapter... ASBL was supposed to be a side project, but the setting and subject matter is something I have a much easer time with, so it kinda took over my focus. Hope you all enjoyed this regardless :)


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